A Bánh Mì for Two: Finding Love While Looking For Yourself

Hello everyone! I’m so glad you’re here with me today. It’s been a while since I’ve done a full book review, so here we are! Today I’m reviewing A Bánh Mì for Two by Trinity Nguyen. This story is filled with mystery, loss, and love of all shapes!

Synopsis

The story is written from the perspectives of two girls, Lan and Vivi. Lan is a Vietnamese girl helping her widowed mother run the family bánh mì stall in Saigon. But her secret passion is the popular food blog she started with her father, A Bánh Mì for Two. Any place she posts about sees an influx of customers, foreign and local. But since her father’s passing, she’s been fighting major writer's block, only made worse by a big blogging contest. Until she meets Vivi.

Vivi is Vietnamese-American, but her parents treat Vietnam as a curse, something never to be spoken about or visited. Something in their homeland haunts them and Vivi is determined to find out what. She secretly chooses Vietnam for a study abroad semester in order to find the truth about why they left and to experience everything she’s read about on her favourite blog, A Bánh Mì for Two.

When the two meet, they strike a deal, Lan will guide Vivi through Saigon, helping her piece together her mother’s story. Vivi will help Lan start writing again so she can enter the life-changing contest. The more time they spend together, the more the attraction becomes undeniable. 

If you love cute, sapphic romances, and exploring the many shapes of love, you’re sure to love this book. From here on out there will be spoilers, so be warned!

Lan’s Search For Her Path After Her Father Passes

Death often leaves us not knowing where to go next, and that’s exactly where Lan finds herself at the start of the story. Since her father’s death, she’s been taking care of her mother, who’s not as well as she once was, and the family’s bánh mì stall. She’s put her blog and her dreams to the side, as she feels she is obligated to.

She feels immense loss and guilt around her father’s death, and that by leaving, she is betraying her family. She believes she can’t — or shouldn’t, rely on her cousin Triết, who is attending university in Saigon and living with her and her mother. So, despite her mother’s assurances, she puts her passions and grief aside, unable to write the blog she used to run with her father or even pick up the books he left her.

Vivi’s Search For Belonging & Answers

Vivi is the opposite of Lan. She feels disconnected from her family and feels this gap in her history and connection to her culture, while Lan feels a deep obligation to hers and is deeply connected to Vietnam. Vivi feels like she doesn’t belong to either place. Too Vietnamese to be American and too American to be Vietnamese. She feels like her parents kept a part of her identity from her.

She feels so strongly about finding the truth, she lies to her parents in order to go find it. She “borrows” her mother’s old photos from Vietnam to try and uncover the missing pieces of the past and maybe find that missing connection, where she really belongs.

Finding Love While Looking For Yourself

Vivi and Lan are the perfect foil for each other. Vivi reaches for the past she’s lost and for her place in the world, where Lan turns away from the past and from the future she wants, firm in the belief that she has found where she should be.

Through meeting each other, they gain new perspectives of the world they live in and become brave enough to face the past and the future. They discover that love is wonderful and freeing, but also challenging and can be a heavy chain. 

Slowly Lan begins to see Saigon anew, through the eyes of a girl seeing it for the first time. It’s no longer a place to disappear into, it’s messy and chaotic & always changing. It’s a place shaped by many cultures through colonization and migration and it is her home and her father’s home.

For Vivi, she learns that war leaves deep scars and trauma, even decades later. By meeting the people of Saigon on her journey to find the women in her mother’s photos, she discovers life after the war wasn’t easy, it was about surviving, and that’s why so many left. She realizes the sacrifices her parents and thousands of others made to come to America was an act of love toward the future generation, a hope that things will be better.

Through helping each other heal, Lan and Vivi fall in love, a bit of symbolism for cultural reconnection, in my opinion. They find themselves while loving each other. For Vivi, she’s finally able to connect to lost family and explore the city her mother grew up in. But she also discovers the pain that her mother’s departure left. 

For Lan, she’s able to reconnect to her passion of writing through exploring Saigon again and becomes brave enough to face her grief. She picks up the books her father left her and lets herself grieve while also letting herself dream again.

Story Development and Writing Style

I loved the way Trinity Nguyen wrote A Bánh Mì for Two. Writing a split perspective story can be a challenge, you have to keep the character voices distinct so they feel like different people. Hats off to you, Miss Nguyen. 

I appreciate that we got a few background chapters of life for Lan and Vivi. Understanding where both of them were at before their stories collide helps give context to the story that’s coming and how they feel before they even meet. Seeing how Lan struggles with her writing, the memories of her father all around her, and her own wants makes Vivi’s effect on her life that much more significant. The same goes for Vivi. Her whole life, Vietnam has just been old photos and blog posts. Lan makes it a place full of life and stories. Seeing their perspectives before they get entangled in each other's lives makes the story that much more meaningful.

In terms of writing style, I was delighted by the language in this book. Saigon comes alive in Nguyen’s writing. She weaves stunning visuals into scenes that evoke universally familiar emotions. My personal favourite sees Lan describe kites bleeding into a sunset.

Using Vietnamese within the story forced me to look things up and immerse myself in Vietnamese food and history. Did I know Vietnam was once a French colony? Yes. Did I know there are still French quarters and architecture left over? No! I learned a lot from this book and it made it all the better for me! I’ve already been looking at where I can try some bánh bao in my city. I would love to read it for the first time again!

Queer Representation

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. I love books that have queer romance but the lessons and development lie elsewhere. Vivi and Lan’s relationship is a part of the story, but the main plot lies in their pasts, the relationships to their respective families, and how they change each other just by meeting and loving each other.

For me, having queer stories where the focus is more than discovering yourself and your sexuality helps expand queer literature into more genres, making it more accessible and “mainstream”, normalizing the inclusion of queer people in literature. There will always be room for coming out stories, we will always need them in order to let people know it's okay to be gay! I just dream of a world where it’s no longer a big deal to include the LGBTQ+ community. 

Conclusion

I absolutely adored this book! It’s full of sweet moments, family history, and queer love. It also gave me some insight into the experiences of first generation kids in North America, and the extent of the destruction of the Vietnam war.

As a white woman, I’ve always been “American enough”. I don't feel that same disconnection that Vivi feels to her identity. I knew that it existed and others felt it, but to have someone put it into words, describe the feeling, opened my eyes to how other people experience the world we live in together. But hey, that’s part of why reading is so important, right? 

One final note, this book has beautiful sprayed edges. If you remember my 2024 summer TBR list, it was one of the reasons I was drawn to this book. What can I say? I love some pretty extras! 

Thanks so much for being here! I’ll see you next time!