Hello Kitty Must Die

• Publisher: Adams Media
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Choi's scorching-hot debut rips into the stereotype of Hello Kitties, young Asian-American women who are upwardly mobile, outwardly modern, but trapped by their families' old-fashioned cultural expectations. A week before turning 28, Fiona Fi Yu, a San Francisco corporate lawyer who lives with her parents, uses a silicone device to take her own virginity, an act she soon regrets. When she consults Dr. Sean Killroy about restoring her hymen, the cosmetic surgeon turns out to be Sean Deacon, a former grade school classmate who once lit a girl's hair on fire. Fi renews her friendship with Sean, who draws her into a secret world that's empowering but also highly disturbing. As Sean encourages Fi to fight back when her parents suggest suitors, people who cause problems for Fi wind up dead. A demonic stir-fry of influences, including Amy Tan, Chuck Palahniuk, Clive Barker, and Candace Bushnell, infuses Choi's prose with passionate ferocity. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Look to the blatantly homicidal intent in the title, not the hot pink cover, to get a sense of this debut novel, which combines the violence and nihilism of a Chuck Palahniuk or Brett Easton Ellis novel with chick-lit label-dropping. “The six-figure salary, the J. D., the Eileen Fisher-Armani-Calvin Klein wardrobe didn't liberate me from the confines of tradition, culture and family,” says 28-year-old San Francisco lawyer Fiona Yu. Still a virgin and living with her Chinese American parents, who are aggressively intent on marrying her off, Fi rails against stereotypes of Asian women as “mouthless, clawless, Hello Kitties.” Fi finds increasingly twisted escapism from family pressure and corporate life with Sean, a long-lost childhood friend, who, Fi realizes, has matured from youthful sociopathic acts, such as setting a classmate on fire, into a busy and focused serial killer. The novel's remorseless, homicidal spree, reminiscent of that in the film Natural Born Killers, and the acid-bath satire work against glimpses of Fi's real vulnerabilities, creating an uneven, sometimes alienating mix. The shock-value plot should provoke plenty of hype, but it's Choi's furious, laugh-out-loud social commentary that is most noteworthy. --Gillian Engberg