Come Undone

by Eddie Huang

From the author of the classic coming-of-age memoir Fresh off the Boat, tragicomic autofiction about how one very messed up and haunted manchild finds love in spite of himself.

Hubie lives an exciting life. He hosts a traveling food show, produces it with his two best friends, and tastes the best the world has to offer for a living. He also treats his romantic partners as courses on a tasting menu. He has one rule when it comes to romantic partners – three months and then it’s over. Hubie is no hubbie. 

Then he meets Anastasia, a mysterious woman who seems to share his approach to life--she wants fun, she wants sex, and she wants to be able to take off before dawn. They have chance encounters in all sorts of glamorous locations – a luxury spa in the Utah desert, Goldeneye in Jamaica, exclusive private clubs in LA – but each time they are with other partners. When they finally connect the chemistry is undeniable. But beneath her carefree exeterior, Anastasia has a secret – she is a high-end madam, linked to the underworld and trying to find a way out. Hubie has secrets of his own tied to his violent past and the trauma of growing up in an abusive household. Just as they find a way to be together, the specter of their pasts rises to threaten everything. Will they be able to accept each other fully when they know each other's truths? Can they shake off shame, regret, and human baggage to free themselves to love? 

Light-hearted with hidden depths--just like it's two protagonists--this book uses love as a means to understand how two people can truly embrace a second chance when having come from a world of trauma and pain. Does it require cutting off their pasts entirely? Is that even possible? Come Undone will beckon readers gently into deep waters before of course delivering its happy ending.

Genres: Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication June 16, 2026

About the author

Huang was born in 1982 in Washington, D.C. to immigrant parents from Taiwan. He was raised in Orlando, Florida, where his father managed a successful group of steak and seafood restaurants. Huang identified with African-American culture, especially hip-hop, at a young age. He attended The University of Pittsburgh, Rollins College and graduated with a B.A. He earned a J.D. from Cardozo School of Law.

Not long after graduating from law school, Huang decided for a career change. After being laid off from a New York law firm, Huang worked as a stand-up comic and as a marijuana dealer.

In December 2009, he opened BaoHaus, a Taiwanese bun shop, on the Lower East Side of New York. His straightforward menu consists of pillowy steamed buns filled with a flavorful protein of choice, cilantro, crushed peanuts and Taiwanese red sugar, and sweet bao fries.

He hosted Cheap Bites on the Cooking Channel the end of 2011 and also appeared on several episodes of Unique Eats before leaving the Cooking Channel for Vice where he hosts a recurring segment, also called "Fresh Off the Boat". Also in 2012, Huang was named a 2013 TED Fellow. In 2011 he made the Chow 13 and was voted one of the 101 People You Must Meet in 2011 by Town and County Magazine.

Reviews

[V ᛑᛗᛛ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't like this book. The writing felt clunky and awkward, it pulled me out of the story instead of pulling me in. I kept noticing the writing, which is never a good sign. There were also too many time skips and very short, unimportant scenes. It made everything feel rushed and disconnected. I couldn't fully invest in the characters or their relationship either because the pacing was all over the place and they were all annoying. The execution didn't work for me. Oh, and this obviously written by a man.

[Mariethethird · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the antithesis of women going feral - a man becoming domesticated.

Just take him for a walk/ give him a fidget spinner and he’ll be open to a vulnerable conversation. Maybe.
Or he might just get high, watch what is considered “manly” drama movies and cry about it before taking a shower, forgetting all about it and reverting to being an asshole again.

It was entertaining to read about a man crashing out completely because he’s caught feelings and doesn’t know what to do about it. So what does he do? Everything except communicating to the woman that he likes her.
It’s written in fast quips, light on the feet and with references I think you have to be Angeleño to understand. Not all the time, but sometimes. Or you need to have a special interest in the city of angels, brands, music and movie references. Which it just so happens I do and I found it enjoyable to get his “inside jokes”.

This from the author of “Fresh off the boat” isn’t surprising to me. I could easily see Eddie grow up to be Hubie, emotionally overwhelmed with resentment towards his parents and the crushing Asian shame that’s always making him feel bad.
It’s a quick and on the surface simple book, but there’s a lot hiding underneath all the humor.

Thank you to Random house for reaching out to me with this arc and to NetGalley for facilitating

[Esmeralda Vega Cisneros · Rating 3 out of 5]

Come Undone by Eddie Huang

Where to begin this novel was honestly a hard read. The writing felt awkward it was hard to get into it at the beginning but as I kept on reading I started getting intrigued. This book focuses on a man called Hubie a man child that is just burnt out on being a host for a travel food show, he also seems to struggle with getting to know the people he “ dates “ until Janine comes along & changes it all… Hubie finds himself drawn to her instantly and finally meets his match.

Honestly the best part of the book was towards the end ( and I mean this in the best way ) when we finally realized why Hubie is the way he is coming from someone that also experienced a toxic family I understand where he’s coming from and why he is the way he is, we do see some character growth from him and that’s appreciated.

Overall I give it a 3/5 ⭐️

Big thank you to Random House Group for my giveaway copy.

[Demetri · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Memoir That Starts as a Joke and Ends as a Vow: What “Come Undone” Reveals About Intimacy, Inheritance, and the Stories We Sell
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | February 4th, 2026


Watercolor Piece by Demetris Papadimitropoulos

“Come Undone” is, on its surface, a love story that keeps insisting it isn’t one – a book that tries to outrun sentiment with jokes, brand names, playlists, and the hard bark of a man determined to stay unembarrassable. And yet it is, unmistakably, a romantic memoir: a chronicle of how a self-professed “full-grown baby man” learns that the real humiliations aren’t the ones that make you look corny, but the ones that make you live corny – by never asking for what you want, by calling everything a joke until the joke becomes your personality, by keeping the banker’s box under the desk and pretending you’re fine.

Eddie Huang’s narrator, Hubie, moves through Los Angeles as if the city were a mirror designed to show him his worst angles. He hikes Runyon because he needs motion to metabolize feeling, then can’t stand the “echo effect” of people doing business in public like the canyon is a coworking space. He scrolls social scenes like channels, half-disgusted, half-dependent – skaters turned typeface designers, DJs turned creative directors, party girls turned account executives. The book has a ruthless ear for the modern performance of identity, the kind curated for feeds and dinner tables. Huang’s comedy has always loved the grotesque truth beneath a clean surface; here, he turns that appetite inward, using self-mockery as both shield and scalpel.

The inciting rupture is professional: the network combs through footage of his travel show and assembles a supercut of his suicide references. The corporate intervention – psych evals, ultimatums, image management – lands with the muffled violence of HR language weaponized as concern. Hubie quits, and the hollow space afterward is where the book really begins. Unmoored from schedule and status, he becomes exquisitely vulnerable to what he claims to avoid: intimacy. He says he tries not to “feel shit” when he dates, but the prose immediately contradicts him, flooding with sensation and metaphor: butterflies, anticipation, the canyon air. He loops Sky Ferreira’s “Everything Is Embarrassing” like a compulsive prayer, walks to buy terrible drip coffee he doesn’t want, gives away a sandwich he doesn’t want, then walks home and does it again. The ritual is absurd and strangely moving: a man trying to outsource his feelings to repetition and movement, as if the right number of steps could exorcise attachment.

Huang structures heartbreak as a series of consumer choices – which is part of the joke and part of the indictment. When Hubie spirals, he sips mango Fanta syrup and rents devastation from a video store, asking the clerk for the cinematic equivalent of self-harm. He watches “Blue Valentine,” then “Manchester by the Sea,” and the book’s moral intelligence sharpens: he understands the seductive simplification of blaming the other person, the way villainizing someone can protect you from the more terrifying possibility that no one is purely bad, and therefore loss is not clean. “Everyone is at fault if the film is good,” he observes, and in that line you can feel Huang the writer trying to make his life “good” – not in the happy sense, but in the complicated sense where meaning requires shared culpability.

Then Janine – later revealed to be Anastasia Starr Santopolous, a name that makes Hubie both laugh and flinch with recognition of his own hyphenated inheritance – arrives as the book’s gravitational field. Their relationship begins in the way modern love sometimes does: a flirtation threaded through memes, voice notes, restaurant recommendations, inside jokes that become a private language. Huang captures that contemporary intimacy with precision: the way a “good morning” text can feel like a heartbeat monitor, the way silence becomes a narrative you write against yourself. When Hubie finally sends a raw email admitting he likes her “in a genuine real way,” it lands in her spam folder, and the comedy of the mishap can’t fully blunt the terror of the waiting. The book is full of these moments where the banal machinery of modern communication – spam filters, Instagram close-friends lists, missed signals – becomes fate’s cheap costume.


Watercolor Piece by Demetris Papadimitropoulos

If the first half of “Come Undone” is a comedy of misrecognition, the second half is a lesson in consequence. Hubie’s relationship with violence is one of the book’s most unsettling through-lines. He slaps his manager, Ahmed – a “professional cockroach,” a bagman figure of the brand-deal economy – and feels, briefly, a rush of relief. The memoir doesn’t excuse the act, but it refuses to treat it as an isolated moral failure. Violence here is legacy: a learned language in a family where love and fear were braided together so tightly they became indistinguishable. Janine, for all her warmth and play, draws a bright boundary: there can never be violence between them. It’s one of the book’s quietest, most adult sentences, and it changes the stakes. This is no longer just about whether Hubie can be loved; it’s about whether he can learn a new grammar of feeling.

The narrative’s pivot – and its most haunting section – arrives when Janine falls catastrophically ill. What begins as what looks like food poisoning becomes an ectopic pregnancy, a rupturing emergency, alarms and vital signs and the frantic instruction to get to the ER now. Huang writes these pages with a brutal clarity, the comedy evaporating into a kind of devotional focus. Hubie’s mind tries to do what it always does – split, catastrophize, blame, search for cosmic meaning – but he forces himself into a different posture: get under the wave. Don’t fight. Serve. The prose becomes incantatory, almost athletic in its discipline. If earlier chapters treat feelings as embarrassment, here feeling becomes responsibility. The book is at its best in these moments, when Huang’s signature velocity – the slang, the bravado, the quick cuts – is harnessed to care.

What makes “Come Undone” more than a manic-romantic diary is how insistently it ties private crisis to public myth. Hubie’s family photograph – the one that has been exhibited, reviewed, praised for its immigrant narrative, interpreted as triumph and “Asian American excellence” – is the book’s central object, a talisman and a trap. Critics see “unspoken sadness” and “generational trauma,” but they also package the suffering into something consumable: a symbol, a story better than the truth. Huang’s rage at this is complicated and righteous. He is angry that people can see desperation on the child’s face and still treat the image as cultural proof of making it. He is furious at the way violence gets excused as “cultural,” at the way image laundering becomes survival strategy: dress well, look happy, and the world will agree you are.

In this, “Come Undone” feels quietly in conversation with a lineage of memoirs that interrogate the commodification of pain – books like “The Chronology of Water,” or even the way “Between the World and Me” refuses the comfort of national narrative. It also carries the culinary, sensory intelligence that made Huang’s earlier work – “Fresh Off the Boat,” “Double Cup Love” – so electric: food as consolation, food as memory, food as the one honest language in a dishonest house. Hot pot, dipping sauce, fruit-picking in Littlerock: these are not lifestyle details so much as arguments. Nature doesn’t do uniformity; why should families? Why should love? Why should a self?

The book’s late movement becomes, unexpectedly, tender. Hubie and Janine retreat to GoldenEye in Jamaica, a place famous for “James Bond” mythology but used here as an anti-myth: the luxury of doing nothing, the possibility that peace could be real and not earned through spectacle. Hubie proposes impulsively with a Cartier ring “off the floor,” and Janine rightly roasts the “rotisserie chicken” energy of it – yet she wears it anyway, because the book understands how love often works: sincerity arriving in imperfect packaging.

Then the parents re-enter. Huang writes his mother with terrifying vividness: a woman whose need is so total it becomes cosmology, who sees her child’s life as her property, who can turn celebration into extraction in a single sentence. The hot pot lunch is excruciating not because it’s rare, but because it’s familiar – the thousand paper cuts of criticism, the transactional premise that love means money, the way a parent can act like a creditor and still call it care. Huang’s father is more complicated: remorseful, softened, but still implicated, still too practiced at hiding when the heat rises.


Watercolor Piece by Demetris Papadimitropoulos

The climactic rupture at the wedding weekend is pure Huang: chaotic, profane, funny until it isn’t, then heartbreakingly lucid. The mother’s racist outburst at Janine, her attempted lunge, the public spectacle in the hallway – all of it forces Hubie into the one act the book has been building toward: not violence, but separation. He tackles his mother to protect his pregnant partner. He tells her, plainly, to get out of his life. And then he does something far stranger than revenge: he laughs. It’s a laugh not of dismissal but of recognition, the laugh of someone who has survived by turning disaster into material and now realizes survival is not the same as freedom.

If there’s a critique to be made, it’s that Huang’s gaze can still sometimes default to the cheap reflexes of male narration – the casual objectifications, the speed with which women become projections in the early chapters. He knows this about himself, and the book often frames it as a symptom – stand-ins, substitutions, fear of choosing – but self-awareness doesn’t always equal transcendence. At times the voice is so addicted to its own momentum that it risks flattening the quieter emotional textures it has earned. There are scenes where you can feel the writer reaching for the punchline before sitting long enough in the ache.

And yet the ache lands anyway. Because “Come Undone” isn’t trying to be a redemption fantasy; it is trying to be a record of how people actually change – not through epiphanies but through repeated collisions with their own patterns. In an era when public life is engineered for optics – curated brands, weaponized “concern,” the monetization of story, the algorithmic flattening of grief into content – Huang offers something messier and more human: a memoir that admits the seductions of performance while still insisting on the primacy of the private vow. The vow isn’t “I will be good.” It’s smaller, harder, and more believable: I will not ruin this. I will get under the wave. I will come back.

The final image is quietly perfect: a banker’s box, the family photo removed from the wall and placed inside. Not destroyed, not denied, not rewritten into a better story – simply put away, contained, no longer enthroned over the kitchen. It’s a gesture of adulthood as boundary: you can love what made you and still refuse to live inside it.

Huang has written a book that reads like a man talking fast to avoid crying, then realizing, mid-sentence, that the crying is the point. It is funny, ugly, tender, sometimes exhausting, frequently piercing – a memoir with the nervous system of stand-up and the moral intelligence of someone finally letting the joke end when it needs to. My rating: 84/100.

[Kayla Coker · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t like one stars for book reviews, however, in this case I can’t in good faith give it anything higher,

Even reading it, nothing really happens. MC is a guy that doesn’t want to commit and I’m lost on the plot. Love Interest: I wish there had been more there in terms of character development or anything of the sort.

I really wanted to give a more in depth review, and talk about plot points or anything I found interesting, and honestly outside of bits about Asian identity and generational trauma, and scattered bits of humor here and there, there wasn’t much else.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

[Madi Himelfarb]

Netgalley Arc Review - thanks to the publisher.

Mmmmm, I could see what this book was trying to do, but ultimately it didn’t land for me. Breezed through it, had some big laughs, and felt the food writing was a bit of a surprise bonus. But there wasn’t nearly enough character or plot development in the first half to make me care about Hubie! Too much of that came later on, imho. Not a memorable read for me sadly :/

[Brice Montgomery · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley & Random House for the ARC!

Eddie Huang has always had a gift for responding to the moment in front of him, and Come Undone suggests that it’s a skill poorly suited to fiction.

The novel follows Eddie—uh, sorry, Hubie—the burnt-out host of a food show that sounds suspiciously like Huang’s own shows on VICE. Hubie’s having a bit of a crisis: every single woman he meets wants to have sex with him (and he’s really good at it, don’t you worry), but he’s starting to wonder if, beneath his rough exterior, he really wants intimacy.

The book is crass, self-indulgent, and somehow earnest enough to make the misogynistic undertones feel forgivable, and that’s kind of the point. Hubie might be a philosopher with his brain in his pants, but Huang seems to reach for the fictive medium to genuinely reckon with a lot of toxic attitudes about love and intimacy. He can’t write women, but that’s why he’s doing it—he’s trying to deconstruct his sexism in the heat of the moment.

I suspect this immediacy will be the make-or-break factor for readers’ enjoyment. Huang’s work has always skirted the border between reflective and reactive, whether he’s writing a memoir, hosting a TV show, or directing a movie. He’s willing to throw himself at new experiences because he’s so eager to learn. The rough edges are a feature.

That said, as much as I appreciate Come Undone as a project, I didn’t really enjoy it as a book. The horniness is a little too. . . self-satisfied, and while that eventually gives way to a sweet exploration of marriage, the countless sex scenes are neither meaningful nor titillating enough to add to the themes Huang is exploring. Similarly, the book is peppered with endless references to pop culture, and while some of them are an effective way to highlight Hubie’s inability to build relationships without the framework of movies and music, many are just disposable half-memes that nobody will remember in a year or two. Consider, for example, the following sentence:

“She smiled like Ariana Grande on the Wicked press run—i.e. like she was on lithium.”

Groan.

All that said, while I wasn’t won over by Come Undone, I did find myself finishing with an even deeper admiration of Eddie Huang. There are so few public figures who consistently challenge themselves to play with mediums beyond their mastery, but Huang’s willingness to explore, experiment, and express himself feels like the mark of a true artist—one I will always seek out.

[Ariana Weldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first dip into Eddie Huang's works, and it was a fun, if not slightly confusing, ride.

Hubie is...layered. At first I struggled with his character, unsure if I was supposed to like him, or not like him, or root for him, or not. Eventually I settled on "I'm just here for the vibes." Which seemed like the right choice since we cover all things from ridiculous escort calls, generational trauma, difficult family dynamics, relationships, and how that all comes together to chase after intimacy and love. Hubie is also enormously hard on himself, resigned to people leaving — partly from his self sabotage in places and the trauma he desperately needed a different therapist for.

There were still moments in what is really a quite heavy book that had me laughing. Moments that had me quoting the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt "Your experiences are not universal" and multiple notes that just say 'There is so much to unpack here.'
For example:
People tell me I shouldn't let others ruin things for me, but I do. So many things need to go right for something to be exalted, but it only takes one misstep to fall back to mediocrity. It's like your local pizza joint with the perfect margherita slice that never misses for twenty years, then the owner's son grows up, goes to Wharton, comes home with private-equity money, opens five new joints, and everything turns into a f*cking pumpkin.

And:
"I thought it was a little freaky deeky to be into a guy broadcasting he's got swamp a$$, but go off, Catherine.

That second one, I want that in a museum somewhere.

These are weaved throughout the book in a way that makes the absurd moments of writing feel really commonplace and, honestly, very fitting for the book. But equally had me blinking and wondering if I'd just seen the string of words I thought I did.

I think it's really a marker of Eddie's capacity as a writer that he can bring these 'wait, what?' moments so effortlessly into what, as I already said, is really a very heavy book.
Because at its core, Hubie is navigating a lot of trauma, from a lot of sources. A lot of baggage. And still chases this person that he's drawn to. For Janine's side, she's a bit flat. We get glimpses of her, mysterious, glamourous, apparently very Greek. But through Hubie we get the insight how different she is to the other women he had relationships with. This isn't a redemption arc, or a big romantic love story. It's like a hyperbolic slice-of-life, coming to domestic living moment, and he gets there in the end.

[Anna W · Rating 1 out of 5]

Come Undone is the story of a man from LA named Hubie who hosts a travel food show but doesn’t seem to enjoy it, or much else, anymore. He has issues with commitment, depressive tendencies, and is trying to figure out how to navigate it all.

I found Hubie a consistent character trying to figure out life and there were some interesting nuggets around generational trauma, and being Asian American in LA. However, I did not enjoy this book. The plot was non-existent, which is not itself a problem, especially if the explorations of themes, character development, or emotional depth makes up for it. This novel does not have that and the points it does try to hit, we barely scratch the surface of.

Janine’s character is paper thin, so she felt like a plot device for Hubie’s intended story arc. The pacing is off, which does mean the book is fairly short and, with the amount of dialogue, the book is quick and easy to get through. Although the word “bro” probably made up a chunk of that word count.

The story and ideas could have been worth telling and the tone of voice is unique, but it wasn’t for me. If you’re from LA or a fan of various films/pop culture, you may get a kick out of some of these references.

Thank you to NetGalley, One World, and Eddie Huang for the advanced ebook copy.

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hubie is a self-indulgent, out for a good time, dog of a man. Hubie is a food podcaster, who travels the world sampling different foods and cultures. He does the exact same thing with his dating relationships. Never taking the time to get to know his conquests, just taking what he needs from them before he moves on. His best friend, Vigo understands him more than anyone else and tries to guide him to a better path but alas to no avail. Until, one day when he receives a text from a high-end madam. When Vigo arranges a "date", the madam surprises him and when he actually meets the madam, sparks fly. Janine/Anastasia can be as aloof as Hubie when it comes to relationships but being together actually brings out something in each other. They learn to care for each other, support each other and eventually love each other. Can two people who are so independent and wary of relationships actually form one?

Hubie as a character drove me nuts, I wanted to slap him and tell him to get his stuff together. Not my favorite read but I can appreciate the premise behind the story. Decent writing and characters, it's a fast read. Thanks to Random House and Net Galley.

[Kate Connell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some reviews call it a satire, but that doesn't stop it from saying nothing and being an overall boring book. Man is afraid of commitment, man meets illusive woman, man commits to woman once he pegs her down. Not life changing and the writing style keeps it from being interesting or engaging. Hubie was also an annoying manchild right to the end and I didn't really see any growth in his character.

Hubie lives a life other people dream of, he hosts a travel food show that his best friend works on with him, the two travel the world together trying different foods and sleeping with different women. When he meets the mysterious Janine on a trip he thinks he has met his match, she wants a quick fun hookup with no strings and is very open about the other men she is seeing. Hubie finds himself drawn to her, and every time they encounter each other, his attraction to her grows. Once they finally decide to give a relationship together a try, they both must deal with the real underlying issues within their lives and selves to try to create a future together.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC of this novel.

[Megan Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks NetGalley & Random House for the advanced copy!!

This was such a good look into the mentality of having success financially but being at odds with your mental health and constant imposter syndrome.

The main character, Hubie is constantly seeking validation in the wrong places. He jokes to cope with trauma (felt.) and he always keeps people at a distance even his friends that explicitly tell him in no uncertain terms that they are there for him and care about him.
Hubie meets a woman who changes everything. She is mysterious and checks all of the boxes for him but as he continues getting to know her he has to wonder what are those boxes really?

There are moments in the writing that feel forced and a little cringey but it also is kind of perfect for a first person style of story telling from Hubies perspective.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes a dark, dry humor with some real insight into the mind of a financial success who feels like a failure in many other ways.

[Myrrowyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was entertained, though your mileage may vary especially if you still have faith in men. Plot to nihilistic man brain ratio: 2 to 98.

Basically a horny, manchild dudebro with a traumatic childhood and a fear of commitment — who’s very meh about basically everything in his life — takes us on a guided tour of rock bottom, but with better restaurant recommendations and lots of pop culture references.

Satirical millennial cringe is honestly such a good way to describe this. The writing sort of reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk, but with more millennial bro verbiage.

Perfect if you’re looking for 240 pages of what happens when a man’s last horny brain cell fires the PR team and goes full on VIP tour of intrusive thoughts.

The book knows it’s satirical and cringy, and that’s the point. Huang came to play, and he did, but I can see that this brand of humor would make some people throw their Kindle into the sun.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Opinions are my own.

[ama]

I don't rate books this low hardly ever. I wanted to like Come Undone. I really did. It had moments that shone! The food writing, yes. Parts about identity, yes, THE HUMOR, absolutely. This wasn't destined to be a book, though. A comedy special– absolutely. But it just isn't working as a novel. I'm able to see how we're supposed to empathize with Hubie, but he just falls flat without enough character or plot development between funny quips; none of that shows up until the end, when it seems too little, too late, and woefullly underdeveloped. If we could glimpse the real Hubie, the generational trauma that drives him and fleshes him out as a character rather than something flatly rendered on page, sooner, I may have been able to invest more in this story.

As is, it was a bit of a slog. And I hate to rate something this low, because 'Fresh Off the Boat' is amazing– which is why I think this would be better as stand-up comedy.

[Reading Xennial · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up. I have always enjoyed watching Fresh Off the Boat, and I had no idea that the show was based on a book. So I was interested in reading this once I learned that fact and that Eddie Huang is a real person who wrote this book. Also, I have been wondering why there aren’t romance books written by men. So, I was really curious about this book. This book was fine. My reading tastes with romance have changed over the years so I might have liked this one more if I read it a few years ago. The romance felt superficial and gave me the ick at times. The listing says it’s also a “satire” so maybe some of the satirical aspects were lost on me. It was interesting to read, and it will have its audience, but I’m not sure who I’d recommend it to in my life.

Thank you, NetGalley and Random House for allowing me to read this book early. The opinion in this review is my own.

[Suzanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

COME UNDONE has some acutely funny writing that begs attention and enjoyment. There is a man-child protagonist whose inner thoughts range from hilarious to absurd to offensive. Author Eddie Huang sprinkles exclusive brand names, extraordinary resorts and typecasting galore through a modest tale of immature love. The book is fast and readers are treated to a virtual list of items and activities that assure money is a key feature of the plot: how to spend (and waste it ) becomes the primary activity. I probably would have enjoyed this more as a stand up routine than a book. There just isn’t enough going on plot-wise other than conspicuous consumption and novel ethnic stereotyping. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

[Petri · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received an ARC for this book from NetGalley for free.

This book was just the epitome of whatever. A straight male protagonist with a fear of commitment? Groundbreaking. There’s parts of this that almost work for me and are borderlining on funny, but then the characters just end up giving me a ick with their shallow personalities and actions.

The best parts of this are definitely the parts that touch the main characters' Asian identity and generational traumas, and I found the writing easy and fast to read as someone who’s first language isn’t English. Also by the end there's a really entertaining and good scene, but it wasn’t enough to make me rate this higher than one star.

[Sam Zinke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley, and Random House for Advanced Copy of “Come Undone”


This book follows Hubie who is a food TV show host, with a traumatic childhood, which causes him to make a lot of interesting choices.

Unfortunately this was not the book for me, the writing was very crude, and the lingo they used felt very overdone. The main female character was very underwritten, and the love experience seemed very forced. The book had interesting interactions highlighting the relationships between Hubie and his parents, which was the not compelling thing to read.

If you like a quick paced, crude humored book, this one is for you. “Come Undone” releases on June 16th

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arc by #netgalley

This was a book I was pretty interested in. It seemed unhinged in the right ways that I enjoy in my books. However the writing was a little clunky. Id get absorbed into it then jarred out of it.

The story itself was alright and I was able to get through the book but I guess it wasnt what I thought it would be and the characters weren't quite what I was looking for. They seemed a little flat. Could have benefited from being more fleshed out.

Overall 3 stars. Give it a shot.

[Julia Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I laughed quite a bit initially, and think this might have been funnier as a short story. It then devolved into a lot of dialogue and neurotic self-doubt. The main character, Hubie, is disaffected by his dating life and job, and basically lives the life of a dude in his 20s as an older(?) single guy, but with fancier taste in food and clothes. He falls for a madam while on a foodie TV show shoot in Sicily, and keeps running into her around the world. Quick read, but could have actually been shorter. Thanks to NetGalley and One World Publishing for an eARC.

[Ashling · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Wow. This book. One part of my brain wanted to read the nameless brand and product names dropped because I'm a country poor, but the other part said it wasn't worth it. And it wasn't. The writing was interesting. I'd never seen writing quite like this before. But it wasn't interesting enough to get past the pretension and boring "romance". It became very repetitive and I lost interest.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for providing an ARC of Come Undone.

This novel follows Hubie, his lavish lifestyle, and an unexpected relationship that unfolds along the way. I enjoyed the story and found myself laughing at several moments, but at times the writing felt like it was missing transitions that would have helped tie everything together more seamlessly.

It was a quick, engaging read, though it ultimately left me wanting a bit more depth and cohesion.

[SarahBethG · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received an advance digital copy of Come Undone from Penguin Random House through NetGalley. This was my first ever DNF. This reads more like a very long journal entry to me as opposed to a novel. It was hard to follow and I wasn’t a fan of the prose of the main character. I really tried to make to the end of the book. I could only get halfway through it, when I realized I have a pile of other books that I would rather give my time to.

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF- 20%. I could not get into this. Writing was really clunky and so far, just a horny, materialistic man-child talking about his conquests. I don’t know who the intended audience is, but I’m not it. Felt really different from Fresh Off the Boat.

Thank you, Random House| One World, for providing this book for review consideration through NetGalley. All opinions expressed are solely my own.

[Meagan · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️
ARC Review!!
Thank you Eddie Huang and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to receive and honestly review this eARC!
Such a fast paced book with hilarious banter. However, this book felt a little clunky. Like the plot was just all over the place with weird gaps and just awkward lines. I couldn't relate to the characters and just wasn't fully invested.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Essays about sex from Eddie Huang. I was promised sharp comedy and hidden depths, but it read like a spoiled bro’s diary of conquests. He loves a finger in his ass but describes white nail polish as “whorish”. I can’t.

I received an ARC from Random House through NetGalley, thanks!

[Franny M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wanted to like this and tried to like this, but I just couldn't get into it. The humor is minimal and sporadic. I did not enjoy the writing.

Thank you, NetGalley and Random House, for the ARC.

[Sonee Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are the crass ramblings of a man with little depth who is trying to entertain self-reflection. It was mildly entertaining, and although I finished it, I skimmed through large portions.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absorbing, charming, hilarious, painful, and overall memorable.