Rental House
Keru and Nate met at college and built a careful life together, but their families could not be more different. Keru is the daughter of demanding Chinese immigrants; Nate comes from a struggling white family in rural Appalachia. Over two vacations, one on Cape Cod and one in the Catskills, the couple invites their relatives to stay, and the borrowed houses turn into stages for old tensions about money, ambition, and belonging. Weike Wang writes with dry humor and a sharp eye about marriage across cultures and the quiet work of staying together. It was a TeaTime Book Club pick by Dakota Johnson.
What you might want to know about Rental House
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A Chinese American woman and her white husband host their very different families on two vacations, and the rental houses become pressure cookers for class, culture, and marriage.
Yes. Weike Wang also wrote Chemistry, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Joan Is Okay.
Yes. Dakota Johnson chose Rental House for her TeaTime Book Club in December 2024.
Rental House was written by Weike Wang, published in 2024 by Riverhead Books.
Rental House is 240 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Rental House takes most readers 4 to 5 hours to finish.
Rental House is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.