Customer Reviews

Single Sashimi (Sushi Series, Book 3)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was surprised by this book. It was portrayed to me as "chick-lit," which I thought would be a boring read for a guy like myself. Boy, was I wrong!
The plot is riveting--I HAD to keep reading to find out what happens next! There is also a great deal of humor--laugh-out-loud stuff! But best of all, this book didn't feel like fiction. These people were real. I cared about them and wanted to know where they'd end up.
The main character is a wonderfully realistic portrait of a successful, driven individual, who also has a boatload of insecurities and flaws. The supporting cast likewise is filled out with very "real" people that I've known in my own family and friends. The ending was surprising to me--satisfying but very unexpected. And very real.
I'll definitely be reading more of Camy Tang's books. You should too!

Hard work and determination helped Venus Chau shed her excess pounds and transformed her into a woman of beauty. Yet in her heart she harbours the pain of rejection and dismissal she experienced for all those years before.

When Drake Yu, the man who humiliated her in the past, asks her to join his sister's gaming company, Venus is adamant in her refusal until she is passed over for a promotion and her Grandma makes her an offer she can't refuse.

Forced together, Venus can see a change in Drake's behaviour but her inner fear and anger still dominates her response to him. She feels somewhat resigned to being the cousin who fails Grandma's mandate to marry and reproduce!

Camy Tang's feisty and colourful cousins are back in the third Sushi Series instalment as they encourage and annoy each other as good friends do. Camy doesn't do shy and retiring so Venus is full of spark and contentiousness as she makes her mark in her career and relationships. No doubt drawing on her own experience as a Youth Group leader, Camy drops the career minded Venus and solitary businessman Drake as volunteers with the local church youth group, providing plenty of laughs and moments of tenderness. While I would have enjoyed more interaction between Venus and Drake, Single Sashimi is a fun and sassy read that will satisfy Camy's growing legion of fans!

Sashimi is a Japanese dish of thinly sliced fish served with wasabi - or Japanese horseradish made into a paste from the root plant, wasabi. Understanding the title of Camy Tang's latest release, Single Sashimi, I believe Camy Tang has indeed created a character that is fresh, spicy and delectable - Venus Chau. Single Sashim is the third book in the Sushi series, and it is hands down my favorite!

Venus Chau is a smart, aggressive talented software programmer who is trying to make a place for herself in the male dominated world of video/computer gaming. Venus has combined great discipline and sheer determination to re-create her image both physically and emotionally in order to reach the pinnacle of success in her chosen field. However, as a Christian, she is struggling to determine whether or not she is actually seeking God's direction or whether she is simply going forward in her own strength and only performing her daily devotions and prayer from sheer routine and without meaning.

Surrounded by a colorful, vocal set of cousins who are also fellow Christians, Venus finds a true sounding board for the unexpected events that begin to take place as this story unfolds. Suddenly, her grandmother and mother begin to insert themselves into a variety of personal situations in her life at the same time her carefully crafted career path begins to unravel. What on earth is going on?

Well, God's ways are always so much higher than our ways, and it is absolutely beautiful to watch the way He reveals Himself to Venus! Besides the colorful family dynamic, there is an eclectic cast of co-workers, inner-office spies, investors that aren't all they appear to be and a series of events that will keep you reading at a frantic pace. Interspersed among the action are scenes that will have you holding your sides with laughter!! That opening scene with the malodorous soup, the first meeting with the youth group and the Jell-o....man, that was hysterical!

My hat is off to you Camy Tang! Your characters are very real and very believable. Single Sashimi simply rocks!! Pick up a copy today!

Venus Chau is a lead developer for a gaming company. She's in prime position to being promoted until her unethical coworkers cause her to start looking elsewhere. She finds herself at another company headed by CEO Drake Yu. There's tension between the two because in the past, Drake used Venus to benefit his company. Venus is still touchy about that especially since she's still uneasy about the dramatic weight loss she had a few years ago. She has to suck up and gain some self confidence however if she plans to help Drake and his new company AND stop her old one from stealing her work.

In my opinion, this was the best book of the series. I have never read any fiction book, secular or non fiction, that has a woman in charge at a video game industry. Most people do not think that girls like to play video games so it was wonderful to see that stereotype broken in this book. Also for once it was so nice to see a female lead in a chick lit book be bossy and taking charge but not being snooty about it. Venus is a professional and it shows in her work ethic. I applauded the way she treated the people at the new company. One cannot start up a new company where everything is a free for all and Venus showed them the correct way to succeed. I loved reading about her relationship with Drake. Right from the get go you could feel the zing in the air between them. This book had some of the sleaziest bad guys I've read in a while. I think what makes it worse is that people like Yardley and Edgar really do exist, with their abhorrent unethical ways. I wanted bad things to happen to them from the beginning. Thank goodness, Grandmother has toned down in this book. If you've read my previous reviews of the series, you know that she was one of my major complaints. Whether Venus is her favorite out of the four, or whatever other reason, she has mellowed out a lot and her demands are almost reasonable. On the other hand, Venus' mom must take after her own mother with the pushy and annoying way she treated Venus. Luckily there's redemption in the future for her.

I would say out of the three books, this is the least Asian-y in the series. There is splashes of Asian American culture thrown in but the focus is mainly on Venus and the video game companies. Personally I much preferred this. It was nice seeing in the first book, Asian culture in full force. However it's also nice just to have an Asian American character just be, without drawing too much attention or making a big deal that she is a minority.

I'm sad to see this series ending. Unfortunately we won't see Jenn getting her own full book but she should be showing up as a short story soon. This has been a breakthrough series in the Christian fiction industry and I am so glad that it was written. I shall miss these cousins, it's pretty much like reading about my own family! HIGHLY recommended.

Venus, the business-minded, career-driven "sushi" cousin, has a life most people would envy - she's drop-dead gorgeous, makes good money, and is brilliant to boot. As her close-as-sisters cousins begin to find love and settle down, her life on the career fast-track begins to feel as though it's lacking something. It doesn't help that her devotions time has become rote, just one more item to squeeze into a packed day. Venus has struggled for years to be taken seriously in the male-dominated gaming industry, since she's often overlooked for promotion or seen as only "eye" candy, particularly since her dramatic weight loss. When Drake, a charismatic former boss, offers her a high-profile, temporary job plus help starting her own gaming company, Venus is torn. If she can overcome her latent insecurities and give Drake a chance to prove himself, she might just discover that this God appointed chance at love is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity she can't micro-manage or schedule...

Single Sashimi is chock-full of Camy Tang's trademark humor and spiritual insights that also made the first two novels in the Sushi Series such enjoyable reads. It's particularly fun watching the always proper Venus get taken entirely out of her comfort zone (like volunteering to work with a wild church youth group). As her life spirals out of control, Venus gradually rediscovers her identity in Christ and the joy of surrendering every aspect of her life to God. It's a hard call to make, but I think Drake is my favorite hero of the series - his reintroduction to Venus took my breath away. His transformation from driven, amoral exec to sensitive, growing believer is realistic and compelling. The tension between Venus and Drake practically crackles with electricity - she doesn't know what to make of him, and he's more than up to the task of overcoming her prickly armor.

Tang excels at creating very real characters. Over the course of three books, these four cousins are so real they've grown to feel like friends, and their journeys of faith and self-discovery are challenging and thought-provoking. The Sushi Series is smartly written and the characters are unforgettably real, the novels striking a delicate balance between thoroughly enjoyable escapism and life-changing, thought-provoking truths. I can't wait for Camy's next book!

Be careful what you wish for. In the musical My Fair Lady when Professor Henry Higgins expresses his (and all men's occasional) frustration with Eliza Doolittle's incomprehensible female antics in the song that I used as my review title, he honestly believes that a woman who was more like a man would be easier for a man to get along with.

Instead she might be more like Venus Chau.

The author, Camy Tang, assured me that this book was the least "girly" of all her books, thus supposedly posing less of a threat to my testosterone levels. I don't know about that, but I did wonder how Ms. Tang was going to turn her story into one of her patented screwball comedies because of the four cousins, Venus seemed to have her life the best put together in the previous two books of the Sushi Series: Sushi for One? and Only Uni. Rich, successful, brilliant, beautiful, what romantic problems could Venus possibly have? Oh, she seemed annoyed when her cousins' romantic catastrophes occasionally required her to use her charms to waylay and distract assorted male creeps and losers for them, for whom she justifiably had nothing but contempt, but surely someone with all this going for her could have no problems with love and romance, right?

Wrong, and thereby hangs a tale.

For it turns out that Venus was not always beautiful. For most of her life she was fat, ignored by men and shunned by her own beautiful, if flighty and irresponsible mother. So she relied upon her brilliant mind and developed an assertive and abrasive manner in order to survive and to succeed in the overwhelmingly male world of video gamers and video game programmers. Then a severe illness caused her to lose an enormous amount of weight and to be unable to eat enough to put it back on until she had learned self-control, and underneath all that fat turned out to be a woman who truly lived up to her name: Venus. So now beautiful as well as brilliant, Venus' success was assured, right?

Wrong. To her surprise and eventual disgust, everyone, including even those who knew her BEFORE, began to treat her worse than ever. Men stared at her breasts and ignored her brains; women became catty and jealous. If anything, Venus now had to work even harder for respect and became even harder as a result. Viewing the men who succumbed so easily to her physical charms with nothing but contempt, she threw herself entirely into her career and gave no thought to romance or dating, and arguably too much thought to fashions she wouldn't wear to work, high heels that hurt her feet, and neurotically overdone cleansing and disinfecting.

Then as our story begins, Venus is passed over for promotion at work, with the job being given instead to an incompetent junior programmer she catches breaking into her apartment in an attempt to steal the Spiderweb program, a highly advanced game development system she and a partner are creating on their own in order to launch their own video game company. So perhaps it is time to talk to Grandma, the (justly) feared matriarch of the clan and VERY successful businesswoman, about finding investors for launching that company, but Grandmother's favors always come with a price, in this case agreeing to work for a former boss' family in righting his sister's startup, a man she swore she'd never work for again. Drake Yu wants Venus because she's the best...

and because his sister has put together a mostly female staff that this heart attack survivor and (until this) early retiree simply cannot cope with. Unfortunately, the tough and abrasive Venus doesn't really know how to work that well with females either. Worse, God seems to be deliberately complicating things for her. Because her company is aimed at children and their parents, Drake's sister gets the cockamamie idea of requiring employees to do some volunteer work with children. (Venus doesn't even LIKE children!) Guess who Venus runs into at the disturbingly desperate for volunteers teen group at her cousin's church. Of course her annoyingly shallow mother decides to pick this time to rebuild their rocky relationship, and cousin Trish is on the verge of having her baby. Is God TRYING to drive her crazy?

Or just to drive her back into doing His will? As usual, it is obvious where this is going but NOT how we're getting there. It is another frustrating, infuriating, hilarious ride from a master of the form.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the first three books, I look forward to reading Weddings and Wasabi.

Note: Ms. Tang is also the author of an Asian-American Christian suspense romance series: Deadly Intent, Formula for Danger, and Stalker in the Shadows.

Note: Ms. Tang is also the author of the start of another Asian-American Christian suspense romance novel series: Protection for Hire.

Note: For full disclosure I won this book from the author rather than purchasing it.

what an enjoyable series! i sure hope camy brings us more enjoyment soon. i love the family dinamic and want to see the character development. jenn just must be next! thanks camy. i hope you have many more books in this series to come. i miss the cousins already!

Having read Sushi for One and Only Uni I was excited to be able to read Single Sashimi. Sashimi is a delectable and spicy Japanese dish; hence, Venus, the heroine, portrays a likeness to the Japanese dish-complicated, spicy, delectable.
Venus has overcome a great weight loss but her heart still struggles with the "fatness" of leftover problems. Camy Tang brings family issues of divorced parents, cousins who are living the righteous life and a seasoned ex boyfriend who calls out of the blue for a new job opportunity with Venus. Oh! the serious often too funny life of Venus and her clan. Venus struggles with giving all to God but yet longs to hold on to all that she has worked so hard to accomplish.
Even though grandma seems quite insane at times she loves her family and finagles Venus into working with Drake. Grandmas are smart people and grandma knows that Venus' life may change for the good, should she follow her heart. So, following the advice of grandma with a few cousin exchanges, Venus embarks on a new plan.
A great story with a lesson on letting God take control and life will be so much better! This is chick lit at its best. Once again Camy Tang brings us a wonderful 4 star read!

*I reviewed this book for Zondervan*

Chick-Lit has lost some of it's charm for me. When I began reading it, I loved nearly every novel I read. But then, I began to resent the whining and selfishness of many first person narratives. Oh, sure, the heroines always got themselves into a heap of self-induced drama, usually humorous drama. But I found myself getting bored with the same old, same old whining as it oozed out of the pages.

But, Camy Tang has created a series of characters who've made Chick-Lit fun again. She has crafted a family of Chinese and Japanese or blended cousins who've embraced Christianity instead of Buddha, and modern customs instead traditional, The stories have been honest, too. The girls have embraced Christianity, but have not attained anything close to perfection.

Single Sashimi places cousin Venus in the spotlight. Held together by sheer will and protected by stilettos and designer suits, oh, and cleaning products, Venus has created quite the little gaming empire. She is ready to take on the gaming world as a key player, if only she had the actual resources to do it.

Sashimi is my favorite in the series which speaks well of Tang. Her third book is as good as the first. The writing is fresh. And the glossary alone is pure entertainment.

If you like sassy and at the edge of the emotional abyss heroines, unique flavors, a chance to maybe learn a little something and a sweet dash of romance, Sashimi may be exactly what you need to place on your next takeout order.

It's so exciting when an author you already love just gets better and better with every book - and this is definitely the case for me with Camy Tang's final installment in Ms. Tang's fun and sassy Sushi series, Single Shashimi. Of course, it could be the fact that Venus Chau is the most driven and snarkiest cousin in this colorful and hilariously realistic Asian family, but I don't think so. As much as I loved books one and two in this delightful series, Ms Tang has nailed this novel with a force that leaves you longing for more. But, alas, this is the final installment in the Sushi series trilogy, and I, for one, wish there were more.