How to escape blank pages after chapter*s in front-matter of otherwise openright book

Question

What is the preferred way to suppress blank pages following \chapter*{} in the frontmatter of a book. My book is two sided, and I'd only like to escape the (I guess) openright in the front matter, not in the entire book by a global [openany] as suggested elsewhere on this forum.

In this minimal example, I expect "Notations" to appear on p. ii, and "Summary in Chinese" on p. iii, while main-matter chapters (like now) should appear on odd-numbered pages.

\PassOptionsToPackage{swedish,english}{babel}
\documentclass[12pt,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{
    paperheight=238mm,
    paperwidth=165mm,
    left=18mm,
    right=18mm,
    top=25mm,
    bottom=25mm,
    bindingoffset=9mm}

\begin{document}
% Front page
\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{center}
        \vspace*{0.5cm}
        \Huge
            A Book
\end{center}
\frontmatter
\tableofcontents
\chapter*{Notations}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Notations}
 A table of notations go here
\chapter*{Summary in Chinese}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Summary in Chinese}
 Some Chinese text goes here, but there should be no blank page between this summary and the notation-page above.
\clearpage

\mainmatter
\chapter{First chapter}
\blindtext[2]
\section{A section}
\blindtext[2]
\section{Another section}
\blindtext[2]
\chapter{Correctly appearing chapter}
\blindtext[5]

\end{document}

Answer 1

You can temporarilty switch between openany and openright using the \@twosidefalse and \@twosidetrue switches. Below I define \useopenany and \useopenright to do exactly that:

\documentclass[twoside]{book}

\usepackage{blindtext}

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\useopenany}{\@twosidefalse}
\newcommand{\useopenright}{\@twosidetrue}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{center}
  \Huge A Book
\end{center}

\frontmatter

\tableofcontents

\useopenany

\chapter*{Notations}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Notations}
 A table of notations go here

\chapter*{Summary in Chinese}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Summary in Chinese}
 Some Chinese text goes here, but there should be no blank page between this summary and the notation-page above.

\useopenright

%\clearpage

\mainmatter

\chapter{First chapter}\blindtext[2]
\section{A section}\blindtext[2]
\section{Another section}\blindtext[2]

\chapter{Correctly appearing chapter}\blindtext[5]

\end{document}

Note that this approach may confuse the setting of the headers/footers, but if it's for a single page (and depending on that page) it might not be a problem.