Steph Cha

Special for USA TODAY

In the final installment of his delightful Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, Kevin Kwan continues his exploration of the series’ driving force: Rich People Problems.

Some of these problems are minor and easily solved — your prized aquarium fish Valentino is getting a droopy eye? There’s a $30,000 plastic surgery that will fix that right up. But some are a bit less frivolous. In Kwan’s world, where bloodlines are scrutinized and mere multimillionaires are considered poor relations, bitterness and humiliation lurk around every corner.

Questions of money and status color all social interaction, invading even — maybe even especially — the most private and sacred spaces, between friends and lovers and family.

The set-up of Rich People Problems (Doubleday, 398 pp., ***½ out of four stars) is delicious, the juicy stuff of classic high-society drama: a rich matriarch lies on her deathbed, and no one knows what’s in the will.

The chief object of speculation and scheming is Shang Su Yi’s home, Tyersall Park, the largest private estate in Singapore, covering 64 acres in a tony central neighborhood. It’s Kwan’s answer to Pemberley or Downton Abbey, a place that has driven much of the action in every book of the Crazy Rich Asians saga, with expectations of inheritance (and disinheritance) shaping the motivations of several of the main characters. (This movie-ready series is heading your way, with Crazy Rich Asians in the works starring Michelle Yeoh and Constance Wu.)

As Su Yi’s health declines, her jet-setting international family converges on Tyersall Park with a whole range of intentions. Nick Young, Su Yi’s estranged favorite grandson and ex-presumed heir, travels from New York to patch things up with his grandmother years after a bitter fight over his marriage to American commoner Rachel Chu. (Rachel, the protagonist of Kwan’s first two novels, yields center stage for this one.) Though Nick just wants to make amends, his cousin, the odious buffoon Edison Cheng, is dead set on preventing a reunion that might weaken his shot at the estate.

Meanwhile, Su Yi’s granddaughter Astrid Leong deals with a nasty divorce from her jealous, vindictive husband, all while keeping her discreet family out of the papers. In another corner, the inexplicably lovable gold digger Mrs. Jack Bing, née Kitty Pong — daughter of sanitation workers turned soap opera actress turned second wife of one of the richest men in the world (“If someone wrote a book about her, no one would believe it”) — finds that wealth and status can’t buy happiness when your new stepdaughter has more of both.

Kwan’s prose may be plain, but he accessorizes splendidly, with detailed descriptions of feasts and mansions, couture clothing and shiny, shiny jewels. Rich People Problems is a fun tabloid romp full of over-the-top shenanigans, like a society party brawl that ruins both a Ramon Orlina glass sculpture of the hostess’s breasts and “a special pig that had only eaten truffles its entire life and was flown in from Spain.”

It’s more farce than satire, with more flash than depth, but it delivers exactly what it’s supposed to — a memorable, laugh-out-loud Asian glitz fest that’s a pure pleasure to read.

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Steph Cha is author of the Juniper Song mysteries.