Book Review: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is a richly detailed, emotionally driven novel that offers both cultural insight and personal storytelling.
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Book Reviews
Browse our latest book reviews across literary fiction, contemporary fiction, mysteries, thrillers, translated literature and Asian writing. Each review aims to go beyond synopsis and explain how the book reads, what it does well, where it may divide readers and who is most likely to enjoy it.
Book Review: The Verifiers by Jane Pek
The novel is thoughtful, often sharp in its observations, though not always as propulsive as its setup might suggest.
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Book Review: Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven
There’s a familiar promise attached to novels about messy families: humour, dysfunction, and hope that something might come back together.
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Book Review: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
It’s not a novel that announces its intentions immediately. But once it settles into its rhythm, it becomes difficult to look away.
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Book Review: The Compound by Aisling Rawle
This is less interested in the mechanics of competition and more concerned with what prolonged observation does to a person’s sense of self.
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Book Review: The Teenage Textbook by Adrian Tan
It captures adolescence in a way that feels grounded and enduring, avoiding the temptation to romanticise or trivialise the experience.
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Book Review: Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
This is recognisably an Emily Henry novel: sharply observed, emotionally aware, and built around characters who feel like they exist.
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Book Review: Swallows by Natsuo Kirino
It reads less like a thriller and more like a slow psychological unraveling, one that reveals itself through subtle shifts in perception.
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Book Review: I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu Anyan
It’s a book that asks you to pay attention—to the work, to the people who do it, and to the systems that shape it.
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Best Books to Buy with SG Culture Pass (Based on Reviews & Ratings)
This guide cuts through that noise, focusing on the books that readers and critics alike have rated highly.
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Book Review: Eight Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee
It’s a kind of novel that leaves you slightly off-balance, because it refuses to offer emotional clarity readers are often trained to expect.
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Book Review: Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See is a quietly powerful novel that balances historical detail with emotional depth.
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