Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife.

Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?

I was late to the game with Weike Wang’s Chemistry, a 2017 Book of the Month selection and my obsession this summer. While I kicked myself for not reading it sooner, when I saw that Rental House was right around the corner, I was able to immediately snatch it up. And how lucky I was: Weike Wang’s signature keen eye and wit fill every page of this tragic, hilarious, and fully realized story about the messy experience of combining two very different families via marriage.

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts. Married for some years, they find themselves on two vacations that join their families in ways they never prepared for. Keru, the only child of Chinese immigrant parents, has had the weight of the world placed on her from the time she was a child. Nate is from a working-class white family that finds his chosen, intellectual community dubious. Confronted with the very different expectations of their families at once, the couple is forced to contend with the values they grew up with versus the ones they chose in their marriage. Traveling across the beaches of Cape Cod and the mountains of the Catskills, Keru and Nate do their best to keep peace and create a messy, but loving, patchwork family.

Rental House is a gem of a novel. Wang’s prose is infectious and speaks with such honesty that you can’t help but feel like an intimate part of these characters’ story. Relatable, funny, and deeply emotional, Rental House is the perfect book to cozy up with during the holidays—especially when you have to face your own family’s quirks.