B+
Genre: Contemporary Romance, New Adult, Romance
Courtney Milan is well-known (and, on this site, much adored) for her Victorian romances. Trade Me is Milan’s first contemporary and once the Bitches finished knocking each other over on the way to an ARC, we commenced to raving about the book on email and now we are raving publicly because this book is pretty darn sublime.
The basic sum up of the plot is this – Blake and Tina are two college students. Blake is rich; Tina is poor. When Tina tells Blake that he can’t handle her life, he proposes that they swap lives for three months. Pretty soon they are collaborating on projects, meeting each other’s parents, and falling madly in love.
The plot is actually fairly complicated but that’s it in a nutshell.
CARRIE:
What a fantastic book. I don’t know where to even start with the raving. The dialogue is so good that I have to resist the temptation to just quote the whole book.
Let’s start with: the parents. I love the way the parents make many mistakes and cause damage to their children, but they are also devoted parents who have done a lot of things right, who have great motivations, and who clearly adore their children – they are human, not demonized or idealized. Tina’s parents are Chinese, and her ethnicity and her family’s experiences in China are a huge part of who she is, but it’s not all of who she is. I loved the personalities of her parents and how they were shaped by their experiences, but also not, as in the joke about how Blake should expect to encounter cultural differences, and when Tina’s mom is exceptionally outrageous, her dad says, “That’s not a cultural difference. Everyone thought Hongmei was inappropriate in China, too,” to which which the mom modestly replies, “It is one of my many talents,” thus winning my heart forever even though I hate the stress she puts on her children by sacrificing their own needs in the service of others.
Basically, Tina’s mom turns me into one giant run-on sentence of internal conflict, because those stresses are because Hongmei wants to help people who are in life-or-death peril, and I have to love that a little.
Also allow me a moment to say that I love the character of Maria. The reveal that she is transgender is done so well. It is clear that being transgender has caused her considerable difficulties, but it’s not a plot point. She just is who she is, and she’s fully accepted, and she’s the heroine of the next book which makes me scream with happiness.
Other stuff – the humor, the chemistry – SO MUCH CHEMISTRY – the fact that it’s the guy who has an eating disorder (I found Milan’s notes at the end of the book to be helpful in explaining how Blake’s problem is a serious one but not actually anorexia). I loved Adam and I thought it was funny, sad, sweet, and, as Tina would say, “fucked up” that Blake and Adam use curses to express love – the story of why they do that is adorable.
I thought the end veered into melodrama and suddenly got a bit rushed. One thing Milan did so well through the rest of the book was tackle tough issues with a lot of sensitivity. There were moments when I teared up and yet a sense of lightness and hope prevailed. Than all of a sudden all the issues piled on, plus some new ones came up out of nowhere, and it got a little soapy.
RHG:
I think the main theme of this book is “We become the people that would have saved our parents.” I know that’s true for me, and Tina has become, literally, the person to save her family, while Blake is trying to figure out how to be the person who would have avoided his father’s mistake. The problem is, you never have all the information that made your parents who they are, and there are plenty of ways for our children to become the people who would have saved us.
I also loved the explorations of what Tina’s level of poor means. It’s one thing to say “I have $15 in my account until I get paid next” and quite another to say “If I buy a 25 pound bag of rice, I can do all these things with it, and I won’t starve, but by fuck I am going to be so tired of eating poor and feeling like shit.” When a mango is the first luxury she buys when handed a $15,000 spending limit for a month, when she sees “$45,000 for three months” and she immediately does the calculations on what that means for her and her family, that’s the reality.
I have never been so poor that I did the rice variations, but there was a few months when the bulk of my diet was ramen and yogurt. Even when I could see the bag of rice part from where I was, I had a parental safety net that could have pulled me out if it got unbearable. Tina doesn’t have that, and even so, the fear I have that I’m balanced precariously enough that one disaster would cause the house of cards to come falling down…. it’s real. It’s so real, and I don’t think I lot of people realize the high cost of being poor.
The students with no life experience taking Blake’s side in the whole classroom discussion, God so real. The American delusion that everyone who “won” got there on merit, and all you need to do to “win” is just work hard enough, is something so many college students (especially) need to learn about, and it’s so hard to realize that sometimes that doesn’t work, and you’re just not gonna be a billionaire because you work hard. Blake realizes that, and he figured it out quick. I appreciated that so much.
CARRIE:
I absolutely agree that Milan did a great job of showing what it’s like to live without a net – in fact, for Tina’s parents, she is the net. I loved it that the first thing she did when Blake told her how much he makes a month was calculate how much oatmeal that could buy.
RHG, what letter grade would you give this book? And was there squee involved? Are there puppy cannons?
RHG:
I once figured out what the GDP of Denmark would be in packages of ramen.
There was squee, and there was one night of staying up WAY TOO LATE to keep reading and only stopping when the words started swimming on the page. I saw no evidence of puppy cannons, though. I’d give this a solid B+. The melodrama pile up at the end was a bit much. Of course, this is grading on the curve Milan has set for herself, so. How about you?
CARRIE:
I’d be more inclined to give it an A-, but I can live with a B+ on the Milan scale. She’s so hard to grade, because compared to most other books Milan books are almost always top grade but compared against other Milan books, some are definitely better than others. I will stand by your B+ with the caveat that my experienced included at least one or two puppy cannons. (Confused? Check out our review of Milan’s book The Suffragette Scandal to find out where the puppy cannons are coming from. No puppies were harmed in the making of this review).
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I would have bought this anyway, because I adore Courtney Milan, but your review made me immediately go to Amazon and order it. I need to read it RIGHT HOW, but work is in the way…
I rarely read contemporaries (and if you even SAY “billionaire” to me I have a seizure); I was gonna skip this even tho I love Courtney Milan. Your joint review just sold me!
I HATE the billionaire thing! I thought maybe I was alone on that.
It’s not like they’re thick on the ground. Worse still is the billionaire in his 20s. I mean, I get the whole fairy tale thing. I read fairy tales. I love fairy tales.
Gorgeous, well adjusted, 28 year old, billionaire bachelor? That’s not contemporary romance, that’s fantasy and I’d sooner believe in werewolves.
Well, he’s not well-adjusted. But he’s definitely a young billionaire.
I stayed up until the really early hours of the morning, literally falling asleep on my E-reader while reading my ARC of this. I totally agree with everything you say in your review, including the ending being a bit rushed. It’s a great relief to me that Milan is just as good when she writes New Adult as she is when writing Victorian historicals.
Wait, there’s a trans* character and she isn’t used as comic relief or for extra drama? AND she’ll be the heroine of the next book? *squee* Also, on a somewhat similar note, Laura Kaye has a novella coming out that features an m/m couple. Personally, I’m pissed that the book is a novella, which means digital primarily and paper only by special order. The cover is gorgeous and if the book was actually a full story (have I mentioned how much I hate novellas, as a general rule?) and in print, I’d buy the heck out of it AND it would look gorgeous like dang on the shelves at work. Romance is long overdue to have mass market m/m – and I don’t mean those sneaky covers the publishers put on J.R. Ward and Suzanne Brockmann’s books so you don’t know the couple in the book aren’t hetero. I could seriously launch into a rant on this topic. On the upside, RT Book Reviews is finally putting GLBTQ romance reviews in their respective categories, rather than lumping them all in erotica. So that’s a good thing.
@coco While he is an improbably young billionaire, he got it the old-fashioned way- his father runs a ridiculously successful tech company that Blake has been working in since he was born, basically. One of the great things that Milan does is makes it clear that Blake (and by extension, his father) know that they didn’t make this on their own- yeah his father worked really hard and started the company in his garage….with a LARGE investment from HIS parents. There’s no illusion here on the part of the book or the characters that they are truly self-made men, and THAT was super refreshing.
Well it wouldn’t be NA without some over-the-top melodrama would it? Nah, not really true, it’s just that is way too common in the subgenre. I’d have expected Milan to be able to avoid it. The reason I’ve been resisting reading this, besides an aversion to billionaires, is that it’s written in the present tense! Something that usually irritates the heck out of me. But you guys may persuade me yet.
I am so excited i may faint. I LOVE me some Milan and this sounds fabulous! I teach in a high poverty rural area and I have a lot of problems with the way that being poor is dealt with in fiction, particularly in romance, in that it either makes you a saint (untrue) or it’s a temporary thing that is nothing more than a short-term lack of funds that is fixed by some deus ex machina/rich guy. So I’m all over wanting to read this more realistic treatment.
I didn’t mean to bash on this particular book and I haven’t read it so I won’t. I just am so tired of the billionaire bachelor hero that is EVERYWHERE.
I also am not at all into the new adult books. Even as a very young person I gravitated to adults for my friendships. When my peers were looking forward to 16 and getting a drivers license or 21 and getting to drink, I was looking forward to 30. I always thought life really started at 30. So reading about what I see as kids playing at life is boring to me.
That’s not to say I don’t think they should or that I know they won’t be successful at it. On the contrary, I’ve many friends who’ve been happily coupled since their early twenties and are going strong. I just can’t relate.
Young adult and coming of age romances creep me right out. Again, not saying ya’all shouldn’t be reading it but it makes me very uncomfortable. Those stories should only be shared by that person and yes, they’re fictional, but I feel weird and just can’t.
Maybe it’s how much personal info we’re inundated with about young people who either don’t know any better than to post that on the internet or can’t escape scrutiny for even a short private moment but I feel really bad for young people when their life is an open book for anyone to read. I can’t fix this in the real world, though I refuse to support it with clicks or cash, but I can avoid it in my reading and do.
All this is to say that I love reading romance and, I personally, don’t find billionaire bachelors of any age particularly romantic nor do I want to read about kids fumbling in the dark, literally or metaphorically.
Also, so we’re clear, I have no trouble finding a terribly nice, interesting and intelligence man who is skilled at and fulfilled by his work, and who can speak in full sentences but happens to be wealthy, attractive or even romantic. If he’s BILLED as a billionaire bachelor I expect to be reading about a billionaire bachelor and I chose to not.
Sorry! That was @Redheadedgirl.
I almost didn’t buy this, because billionaire (snooze), New Adult (not usually my cuppa tea), and first person (eek!). But I am so glad I didn’t let any of that stop me. The book is about a billionaire new adult, and also so much more. But you can’t really discuss plot without spoiling things. And I’m glad I read the book without knowing more than what was in the blurb (which is accurate, but doesn’t do the book justice).
I really enjoyed this one. I didn’t like the somewhat rushed ending and the plot turn that was telegraphed from a mile away. But I still gave the book an A because I just enjoyed reading this book so much. And the laughter and three-dimensional characterizations were enough to not let the last part of the book derail that for me.
I couldn’t wait for this book, literally. It was taking too much time to appear on Amazon (clock watching until it was the 20th in the US from Aust.), so I used a discount I had for Kobo and got it there and glommed it.
I really enjoyed this. It is well written with intelligent and articulate, strong characters. I read on CM’s site that she is debating the idea of going to five books on the series and if so the last would be about Adam. I was about 20% into the book and I already wanted to read book 5 because I think that would be awesome.
Trade Me is a great book. I agree with the review. I’m looking forward to the next book.
I bought this last night and stayed up really late in order to get about half way through. I’m in love with this book. I’ve never had a book girlfriend before, but Tina Chen is it. I want to marry her.
I stayed up too late last night reading this. NA isn’t my favorite, hate books about billionaires, but I’m all for contemporaries with smart women and fbombs. It did get a little crazy at the end but, you know, fantasy. I’d give it a solid B+. I remember finding out CM had a Chinese mother a few years ago and being kind of pissed off that she spent all her time writing about white people in the Victorian era (not that I don’t love those books). I have a vested interest in books with ethnic Chinese characters as part of a mixed race couple, so I was super excited to see her step out a little and go exploring.
I grew up as poor as the heroine (with a mum who had untreated mental health issues) and I support my mum financially now, so I really appreciated the keeping it real part when it came to poverty and what it means. I also appreciated that the heroine and her family’s race was part of the story but didn’t come across as look at these crazy Chinese people if that makes sense. This felt different than another book I looked forward to reading and then was pretty disappointed in (Back to the Good Fortune Diner).
I must have had a different file, because mine had no notes on the eating disorder but it did have the OpEd piece from the hero’s dad as part of the end matter.
I would love to see some contemporaries where the male is the Asian in a mixed pairing, I have only read one, and it was erotica and not my favorite (mostly because I enjoy the feels more then the action not that the book was bad).
As it turns out, LeftCoaster, the next book in this series does have an Asian dude hero, with Maria as the heroine!
There’s also Helen Kay Dimon’s Impulsive with a Japanese-American hero. It is a sparse field, though.
I LOVED this book. Literally could not turn the pages fast enough. I’m not at all a fan of billionaire stories or New Adult (generally too angsty for me) but Courtney made me love every aspect of this story. She is ridiculously talented and I’m buying her backlist immediately. I’m not a historical fan, but anyone who can make me love a billilonaire/New Adult tale is bound to also write some kick-ass historical fiction.
@New Milan fan:
I think you’ll really enjoy them. Milan writes thoughtful, intelligent historicals. If you need recommendations on where to start, please feel free to ask us!
I’m won over, too. I’m not particularly drawn to billionaire NA books but I read her excerpt and half way through texted my friend, “That B Milan is writing in first person present and I didn’t even NOTICE, that’s how good it is.” Based on that and this review, adding this one to my TBR.
Thanks for the review! I had no idea Courtney Milan had a new book coming out. Saw the review, went straight to Amazon. The thing I really love about her books – even the ones that are about white people in Britain – are that she somehow pulls off making them address social issues without losing the sense of fun that is why I read romance novels. I’m white and sometimes it trips me out that these white fantasy worlds include only rich white people… Milan gives us a fantasy world that is better in the ways that it’s closer to real – with characters that are more interesting because they’re not just the same rich girl in a pretty dress. And thanks for bringing up the puppy cannon – I’m headed off to reread the Suffragette Scandal, which I totally loved!
@Redheadedgirl, yes, I saw that about the next book and YAY! but also, WTF? Why just Ms. Milan? If contemp Asian heroines are rare in romance, Asian heroes are like unicorns. Really bugs me but I’m not as badass as Sarah so I doubt I’ll be writing one any time soon.
And I went back and found the Author note in the end matter on my Kindle, I just hadn’t flipped far enough (hey it was 2 am).
I really enjoyed this book too. I hope she writes a book about Adam, because he was FANTASTIC, if frustrating. And I love that she explores the issues of privilege. ARGH… Don’t want to spoil people. But I love how she acknowledges things at the end. And that whole last part. LOVED IT, and yes it was melodramatic, but I loved it anyway. “Dang it, if only we had…” etc.
I actively dislike New Adult, but I’ll follow Courtney Milan anywhere. I’m glad I did! I read this all in a day, and really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to read book two and get Maria’s story.
I have theories on Adam. Was the CFO his boyfriend?
[…] if you need a bit more information on the plot, this joint review at the SmartBitches reveals a few spoilers that may sway some potential readers towards–or against–this […]
I am absolutely crazy for basically everything Courtney Milan writes (I only discovered her a couple months ago, but she really has become my favorite romance writer) so I was excited to read her take on contemporary romance. I really enjoyed TM and appreciated her truly fresh approach to the billionaire story. My one complaint was the last reveal at the end was probably one too many “secrets” for me — it seemed like everyone in this book had a reveal at some point. But that was a relatively small issue balanced against an interesting storyline, great dialogue, and fantastic supporting characters. There are many things I love about Milan, but I think best of all, I can always count on rich, detailed characterization, and Blake and Tina were no exception. Also, I also have never had a desire to drive a Tesla until I read this book!
@Meredith, I had that theory all along as well. And was very surprised at what was revealed about Adam instead, let’s just say.
Courtney Milan is one of my favourite authors, so I downloaded this book ASAP. And read it in a day.
I found the style a little bit different from her historical books, I’m not sure NA is my cup of tea, I don’t like first person narrative & I’m not interested in twenty-three-years-old billionaires BUT – I loved this book! I couldn’t put it down until the last page, and I kept on reading the notes from the author.
I can’t wait for the second & third books and I want-need-hope that Adam gets his own love story.
C’mon, just a novella if you want, but write it.
I totally believe the late CFO was his boyfriend, it’s just they had his other secret in common!
If Milan ignores the “My (never seen) mom was the only woman he ever kissed” reveal plops Adam into a het romance and after seemingly hinting he is Sekritly Gay Single Dad Tony Stark (with Steve Jobs’s company) I will be sad.
But on the other hand, she’s writing a romance for Maria that has a trans heroine, I don’t see why she can’t make Adam non-straight!
I know the thing in romance novels is to backburner a couple after they get together, but I hope she’s true to what she’s implied and actually makes Tina and Blake the main characters in the third book. I mean, it’s not like they’re at babies ever after – Blake’s little problem hasn’t been solved, Tina’s mom is still doing that thing in their relationship which needs to be resolved, and OMG what about Fernanda and the company!
Yeah, okay, sue me, I read a romance novel and get emotionally invested in the tech company.
Who is the model for the book cover?