“The night before her wedding, Daisy taught me that after the world ended, you still had to get up in the morning, and the things that you ruined would still be there, needing to be fixed. When I looked at famous Jay Gatsby, soul gone and some terrible engine he called love driving him now, I could see that for him, the world was always ending. For him, it was all a wreck and a ruin, and he had no idea why the rest of us weren’t screaming.” – 2.5/5 stars!

Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer, Asian, adopted, and treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.

I can’t believe I was tricked into reading “The Great Gatsby” again. Well, it is my fault for not reading the synopsis beforehand, but how could I imagine by the title and cover this was going to be a retelling of that classic?

When I finally discovered this was a retelling, I was at least hoping the story would be changed to accommodate the magic, the Vietnamese representation, and an LGBTQ representation to the plot – like the synopsis indicates – but that did not happen.

It’s not that it’s a bad book, I just don’t see the point of writing the exact same story from top to bottom with a different POV and adding random magical elements here and there. The names are the same, the plot is exactly the same… there was no surprise in what I was reading. The only difference is that this is being told by Jordan’s POV, she is queer and there is magic – and unfortunately, that wasn’t enough for me. I’m not the biggest fan of the original book as well, so I can’t even say I enjoyed reading the story once again. 

Although I found beauty in the writing, there were a lot of moments that needed context and explanation, but that never happened. I thought the magic was going to save the book, but I was wrong. It was underwhelming, nothing exciting happened, (again) nothing was ever explained, and frankly, the magic was almost non-existent.

I guess I could recommend this to the fans of the original book, but what would be the point? If anything, just reread the original!