Skip navigation
Skip content
Bookseller pick
The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

The Fortunes of Jaded Women

A Novel

$22.99 USD

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Vyvy Nguyen
Length 9 hours 28 minutes
Language English
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
A WASHINGTON POST BEST FEEL-GOOD BOOK OF THE YEAR

For fans of Amy Tan, KJ Dell’Antonia, and Kevin Kwan, this “sharp, smart, and gloriously extra” (Nancy Jooyoun Kim, author of The Last Story of Mina Lee) debut celebrates a family of estranged Vietnamese women who experiences mishaps and unexpected joy after a psychic makes a startling prediction about their lives.

Everyone in Orange County’s Little Saigon knew that the Duong sisters were cursed.

It started with their ancestor, Oanh, who dared to leave her marriage for true love—so a fearsome Vietnamese witch cursed Oanh and her descendants so that they would never find love or happiness, and the Duong women would give birth to daughters, never sons.​

Oanh’s current descendant Mai Nguyen knows this curse well. She’s divorced, and after an explosive disagreement a decade ago, she’s estranged from her younger sisters, Minh Pham (the middle and the mediator) and Khuyen Lam (the youngest who swears she just runs humble coffee shops and nail salons, not Little Saigon’s underground). Though Mai’s three adult daughters, Priscilla, Thuy, and Thao, are successful in their careers (one of them is John Cho’s dermatologist!), the same can’t be said for their love lives. Mai is convinced they might drive her to an early grave.

Desperate for guidance, she consults Auntie Hua, her trusted psychic in Hawaii, who delivers an unexpected prediction: this year, her family will witness a marriage, a funeral, and the birth of a son. This prophecy will reunite estranged mothers, daughters, aunts, and cousins—for better or for worse.

A multi-narrative novel brimming with levity and candor, The Fortunes of Jaded Women is about mourning, meddling, celebrating, and healing together as a family. It shows how Vietnamese women emerge victorious, even if the world is against them.

Carolyn Huynh grew up in Orange County, California, not appreciating the weather enough. She has a BA in journalism from Seattle University and an MS in human centered design from the University of Washington. The youngest daughter of Vietnamese refugees, her writing focuses on her mother’s tall tales, superstitions, the diaspora, and memory (both real and imaginary). She especially loves stories about messy Asian women who never learn from their mistakes. After living up and down the West Coast, she currently resides in Los Angeles with her rabbit and dog. She still doesn’t appreciate the weather enough. When she’s not writing, Carolyn daydreams about having iced coffee on a rooftop in Saigon. Follow her on Twitter @CarolynKHuynh. 

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

Reviews

"Narrator Vyvy Nguyen offers up a lively rendition of this multigenerational saga of contemporary Vietnamese American women. Depicting a cast of more than 14 characters, Nguyen delivers a variety of personalities and voices. She engages listeners in the characters’ humorously messy lives and complicated family dynamics as they try to find a way to lift a curse placed on their family long ago." "Once upon a time in Vietnam, Oanh Duong chose love, causing her descendants—who could only be women—to be perpetually cursed. Of course, “there was nothing wrong with having Vietnamese daughters. It was how the world treated them that turned it into a curse.” Generations later, mostly in southern California, sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins are all estranged, but a powerful psychic predicts “a pregnancy, a death, a wedding,” events which might transform their mutigenerational misfortunes. Huynh’s debut—Good Morning America’s September 2022 Book Club pick—is culturally and linguistically matched with Vietnamese American actor Nguyen, who energetically ciphers a cast so vast that the print title opens with an orange (as in the fruit) family tree. While Nguyen doesn’t quite distinguish the dozen-plus characters, her spirited performance never wavers. Keeping energy up is an absolute must, since the story is full of confrontations involving food and other flying projectiles, slamming doors and dramatic exits, and imploding relationships over houses and K-dramas. The almost-at-the-end showdown, featuring a chorus of savvy half-cousins and a shocked second-date victim reporting the play-by-play (more like scream-for-scream), is a dream scene just waiting for Hollywood commitment." Expand reviews