This debut novel set amongst the Beijing elite explores female friendship, restless longing, and coming to terms with the reality of our dreams.

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Claire Jia’s debut novel Wanting centers around three characters and their desires. We first meet twenty-something Ye Lian, who has a good job, steady boyfriend, and plans to marry him and move into a luxury high rise together. But when she rekindles her friendship with her childhood best friend Luo Wenyu, a successful influencer returning to Beijing from America to celebrate her upcoming wedding, Lian begins to question everything she thought she wanted.

In the second part of Wanting, the narrative shifts to Song Chen, the middle-aged architect of Wenyu’s dream home, who has his own fading hopes and dreams that he must come to terms with. Their stories all connect in the third part of the story, when they collectively grapple with the consequences of their wanting.

Female friendship is at the heart of the story. Lian and Wenyu’s friendship and deep bond comes alive in the shopping malls, restaurants, and karaoke bars of Beijing. Together they recklessly take their “perfect” lives to the edge of destruction as they search for something more real below the surface.

The title is fitting: at its core, this is a story about wanting. The American dream, in various forms, is central to the characters’ desires. Yet its harsh truth leaves them each facing different realities than what they had dreamed of.

These are people who can’t be content with what they have. There is always someone with a nicer apartment, better husband, more successful career. They are all lost in ambition and in need of a reset of what truly matters in life.

The novel sets up some interesting character arcs with strong potential for growth, but I don’t think all the characters truly got there. Chen seems to be the most developed and evolved character. The first two parts of the book read like slow paced literary character explorations, while the final section delivers more action and momentum.

I love the cover and enjoyed the Beijing setting and strength of Lian and Wenyu’s friendship. Ultimately I would have been more satisfied with the book if the characters had evolved more and come to accept that, as Chen’s wife says, greatness is elusive and ordinary is the stuff of life.

Thank you to Tin House Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.