Entertaining and nuanced.
Chloe hires the perfect Chinese boyfriend to thwart—and appease—her parents.
College sophomore Chloe Wang is horrified by her parents’ latest misguided endeavor: relentlessly pushing her to accept a proposal from the insanely well-off—and deeply sexist—golden boy of their Palo Alto Chinese community, Hongbo Kuo. So, Chloe enlists the help of Rent for Your ’Rents, a “Match.com on steroids” providing fake boyfriends who pass even the most traditional Asian parents’ standards. But even with his perfect Taipei-accented Mandarin and pre-med major, it’s an uphill battle for Andrew Huang to earn enough “mooncake points” to win over the Wangs. Masquerading as Andrew, 21-year-old Drew Chan’s operative training as a winsome boyfriend is severely tested. Over the course of several holiday dates, it becomes progressively harder for both Chloe and Drew to follow the playbook: “Always know the line between the job and reality.” And it turns out, they aren’t the only ones keeping up a charade. Through alternating points of view, Chao keeps up the romantic and dramatic tension, and her characters bring welcome layers to the fake dating trope. Both children of Taiwanese immigrants, Chloe and Drew come from tight-knit communities, and Chao presents the diversity within the diaspora. Frustrating familial tensions and miscommunication abound, and the reconciliation is realistically complicated but also optimistic. Most of the cast of characters are Chinese American.
Entertaining and nuanced. (glossary) (Romantic comedy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6245-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An inclusive, optimistic message deepens this charming romance.
A life-changing summer in Europe brings two neurodivergent teens together.
Tilly, 18, has ADHD and a psyche dented by parental expectations she’s unable or unwilling to meet. Her parents have long held up Mona, her Yale alumna sister, as Tilly’s exemplar. Mona has relocated to London to start Ruhe, an environmentally friendly nail polish business, with Amina, her business partner and romantic prospect. Hired as their summer intern, Tilly’s thrilled to escape disempowering parental oversight that veers from infantilizing (“Are you being good for Mona?”) to rigid insistence on academic achievement. While flying to London, Tilly’s English seatmate, Oliver, also 18, witnesses Tilly’s ADHD symptoms firsthand (call it a meet-awkward). Handsome but distant, he’s Ruhe’s other intern, his considerable skills mediated by the impact of navigating the world as an autistic person. Traveling across Europe to market Ruhe, they share diagnoses and discoveries—each one struggles with hyperfocus—offering support as needed. Oliver adores colors, especially understanding and applying the science behind them. Writing is Tilly’s passion; with growing confidence, she finds an outlet for her spontaneous creative spirit, something Ruhe needs. Acting on their mutual attraction forces the teens to move out of their self-limiting comfort zones and take emotional risks. Eddings, who shares both characters’ diagnoses, brings clarity, humor, insight, and empathy to their challenges. An adjunct assortment of bright, variously divergent teens manifest kindness, affection, and acceptance. Most major characters appear White; Londoner Amina has “amber skin.”
An inclusive, optimistic message deepens this charming romance. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781250847065
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
For murder-mystery fans, there’s more than enough horror and gore to sustain this effort (and several more), making for a...
A scary gorefest of murder and mayhem, not for the faint of heart.
High school best friends Meg and Minnie join a weekend-long, alcohol-infused party on a small island off the coast of Washington. Their parents think they’re elsewhere; in fact no one knows they’re there except the ferry crew and the other eight attendees. A fierce storm is battering the island, and the power fails, plunging them into darkness and complete isolation from the rest of the world. Then teens start to turn up dead in rather gruesome, vividly depicted ways: hanged, impaled by driftwood (really!), electrocuted, etc. At first, it appears that the deaths could be caused by a bizarre combination of suicide and accident, but as the body count soars, the teens have to choose: Is one of them a serial killer, or is the murderer stalking them from beyond the group? Clues are just amorphous enough to sustain the mystery, and since mistakes are lethal, the suspense is high. Meanwhile, it also becomes obvious that some of the stereotypical teens share relationships that weren’t apparent at first, i.e., Meg’s far-overworked yearning to pair off with T.J., the handsome guy that unstable Minnie lusts for.
For murder-mystery fans, there’s more than enough horror and gore to sustain this effort (and several more), making for a breathless read. (Mystery/horror. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-211878-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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