Asian

Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

September 11, 2021 2 Comments

7 Hours 3 Mins | Harper Audio | Contemporary | 5/04/2021

In this book, the titular Meet Cute Diary is a wildly popular Tumblr blog of supposedly true meet-cutes from transgender couples. In reality, all the posts are from the imagination of 16-year-old Noah Ramirez–who has only ever dreamed of having his own meet-cute.

When an anonymous troll tries to discredit the blog, Noah and a handsome bookseller stage a social media love story inspired by Noah’s fake posts.

The Meet Cute Diary is a refreshing take on the coming of age YA love story that creates room for queer and imperfect teens but… its main romance left me wanting more.

*mild spoilers below*

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These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

April 15, 2021 Leave a Comment

14 Hours 4 Mins | Margaret K. McElderry | Historical/Sci-Fi/Horror | 1/26/2021

These Violent Delights is a Historical (sci-fi ?. .horror ?) YA set in the dangerous and dazzling city of Shanghai during the roaring 20s Shanghai. The novel is an homage (read: Not a retelling. Not even a little bit) to Romeo and Juliet and follows rival gang heirs Juliette the cutthroat fierce heir to the Scarlett Gang and Roma the stalworth Russian heir to the White Flowers, as they hunt down the source of a maddening disease sweeping the city

Going in I didn’t know much about Shanghai’s history as an international (read colonized) port. It’s the perfect setting for this dark and mysterious mystery the main characters find themselves in. I’m curious to read more book set during this time period.

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Skyhunter by Marie Lu

December 30, 2020 Leave a Comment

11 hours 58 minutes| Macmillan Audio| Dystopian| Release Date: 9/29/2020

Skyhunter feels like a follow-up to Legend (which is almost a decade old at this point). It has all of the things that made Legend such an enticing read; betrayal, biological warfare, experimentation, and coats. Lu loves to write characters in sweeping coats…though there are noticeable fewer epaulets in this one.

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Book Review: Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon

September 30, 2020 6 Comments

Unrated | 384 pages | Simon Pulse | Contemporary | Release Date: 2/18/2020

Of Curses and Kisses is an introspective slow cooker ( I saw this term on Twitter and I couldn’t wait to use it !) of a romance about Jaya, a reserved modern-day princess at St. Rosetta’s International Academy. She’s on a mission to take down a rival family’s heir, Grey Emmerson, for a slight against her sister. It’s a lofty goal, but Jaya discovers instead of being a fierce rival, Grey Emerson is a broody, introverted outcast.

We follow Jaya as she is entrenched in Rosemont drama, this book is genre-savvy and Emerson sees through Jaya’s start-a-fake-relationship-and-dump-him plan so the initial premise of the book is dropped pretty quickly. The book is a lot of Jaya and Emerson working through their emotions and coming to terms with who they want to be versus who their families expect them to be.

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All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

September 13, 2020 Leave a Comment

6 hrs. 42 min. | Memoir | Catapult | Release Date: 10/2/2018

Nicole Chung is probably most well known around the internet as the managing editor of the now-defunct The Toast and her If John Cho Was Your Boyfriend piece. In her memoir she tells the story of her transracial adoption, her path to finding her birth family and how she inadvertently uncovers a family secret.

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Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien (A Noodle Shop Mystery #1)

December 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

328 pages | St. Martin’s Press | Cozy Mystery | 3/27/2018

I really don’t know how to review a cozy mystery. I picked this book up because I was in the mood for something different and I like seeing authors of color in spaces that have been traditionally very homogeneous.

Death by Dumpling felt very much like an origin story as we are introduced to Asia Village–a quaint Asian shopping center in Ohio—and Lana Lee, our 27- year-old half-English half-Tawainese protagonist. Lana is working at her family’s restaurant in Asia Village after quitting her corporate job and when she delivers the dumpling that kills the owner of Asia Village, she reluctantly joins the case to find the true murderer.

I found Chien’s breezy first-person writing enjoyable as we met the residents of Asia Village and Detective Trudeau–who I think plays a significant role in other books. The book fell a little flat for me but I’m curious to read the next book.