I thought the premise of Kyla Zhao’s The Fraud Squad sounded amazing. I love Gossip Girl and Crazy Rich Asians, and the idea of socialite friends reinventing a working-class girl had fun My Fair Lady vibes, with a modern Singaporean style. Wealthy Timothy Kingston decides that making over a working-class friend as a socialite will prove to his high-class parents that one’s family background doesn’t matter. Samantha Song has been reading fashion and society magazines cover-to-cover, and she dreams of being in that world for real. Their mutual friend Anya is the third member of the Fraud Squad, setting up working-class Sam as a socialite, with the goal of scoring an invitation to the most exclusive gala in Singapore.

Ok, so the stakes don’t make a whole lot of sense because Anya could just invite Samantha as her party plus-one anyway, it’s not like there’s a genealogy check at the door. I almost always love an upscale gala drama, who doesn’t want to see a social showdown with a gorgeous setting? but the whole S Gala deadline seemed a little forced. And for a book called The Fraud Squad, there’s not a whole lot of secrecy or fraud, Samantha uses her real name and real job, a PR firm where Anya is her real coworker. It seemed an unnecessarily dramatic setup for basically going to cool parties — and I do love a good drama about cool parties. Basically Sam deleted her real social media, and since she reads and loves socialite magazines, she dropped the right designer names and right opinions. The big secret was basically that Sam was borrowing posh clothes from Anya, which just didn’t have stakes or tension for me.

There’s a lot of potential in this novel’s premise around who we really are and who we pretend to be, who we are and who our families want us to be.  The high-pressure world of family foundations and young people growing up groomed to take over their dad’s job some day, plus the very different pressures of working people trying to cover the bills, could have been a really appealing story.  But the whole anxiety of being unmasked was forced — Samantha wasn’t actually lying about anything!

The setting was part of what appealed to me (Ok, the gorgeous setting plus social secrets), so I think I would have liked this more with more description. There were some fairly predictable moments that leaned on the stock characters of Hardworking Mother, Loyal Bestie, and Shallow Rich Girl, and I think that would have been fine with more gorgeous party descriptions or great Singaporean food descriptions. I’ve read loads of Talented Young Nobody bumping into Powerful Careermaker at a party, (Gossip Girl alone has done that plot a few times!) so I don’t really mind the predictability. With more detail and description of the gorgeous party, newcomer’s talent, and careermaker’s impossible reputation,  it would be great.

There was also a big reveal that wasn’t really a reveal to me. Basically there’s one known character who has a degree in classics, and there’s one secret writer with written work full of classical myth allusions. Since I love classics, maybe I paid more attention to this, but I felt like the other characters were dummies for not catching on, which isn’t a good way to feel about the big reveal.

It feels odd to write a fairly negative reaction to a book, especially a book that includes so many things I like! And so many elements I was specifically in the mood for! In reading The Fraud Squad, I kept feeling like it was just about to get really good, like maybe these fairly flat characters were still setting up for the real plot. There are so many elements I like in this novel, with hidden identities, social climbing, powerful connections, and pretty clothes, that I just kept waiting for it all to coalesce into a great book.

For another story with these same kind of upscale-lifestyle elements, and the same overall vibes of hard work and true friendship rewarded, consider Candace Bushnall’s Lipstick Jungle, set in Manhattan. Kevin Kwan’s newest novel, Lies and Weddings, is full of clear baddies going down and virtue rewarded, all set in gorgeous, upscale environments, with delicious food, too. You’re Invited, by Amanda Jayatissa, is a great thriller, so the atmosphere is a bit different, but set at a posh Sri Lankan wedding with loads of secrets and secret identities.