The man who Grace thinks is The One has finally given her The Ring! She is so blinded by love, she barely registers that he is moving overseas for work and hardly has time to talk to her—or that a leggy blonde appears in nearly all his photos. When Grace surprises him with a visit to Singapore, she suddenly finds herself on a furious chase to save her dream wedding, her sanity and her future children. The plot of Amazing Grace, by Tara FT Sering, bears all the hallmarks of a typical chick-lit novel: a young, fashionable heroine working in a big city; a desperate quest for love; a series of obstacles encountered and overcome. But this story does have one notable difference: it was written by an Asian author for an Asian audience, and the protagonist is Chinese-Filipino.

Over the past decade, chick lit has become a pop-culture phenomenon, globally. Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary (1996) and Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City (1997) sold millions of copies, appeared in dozens of translations, spawning film and TV adaptations and turning their heroines into cult figures. More recently, the Shopaholic series and Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada—and the new Chasing Harry Winston—have also won over fans worldwide.

While Anglo-American chick lit has inspired Latin American, Eastern European and Indian versions of the genre, Asian authors have been slower to embrace it. While many Asian female novelists have tackled romance and sex—Wei Hui in Shanghai Baby or Ayu Utami in Saman, for instance — they haven’t really done so in the lighthearted style associated with chick lit. Says Marysia Juszczakiewicz, head of Literary Agency at Hong Kong’s Creative Work, “Chinese women’s fiction is more about identity, and often set against a social and historical backdrop.”

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