"Weepingly funny." --The Wall Street Journal
"Delightful." --Buzzfeed
"Charmed my socks off." --David Arnold, New York Times bestselling
author of Kids of Appetite and Mosquitoland
Four starred reviews for this incisive, laugh-out-loud contemporary
debut about a Taiwanese-American teen whose parents want her to be a
doctor and marry a Taiwanese Ivy Leaguer despite her squeamishness with
germs and crush on a Japanese classmate.
At seventeen, Mei should be in high school, but skipping fourth grade
was part of her parents' master plan. Now a freshman at MIT, she is on
track to fulfill the rest of this predetermined future: become a doctor,
marry a preapproved Taiwanese Ivy Leaguer, produce a litter of babies.
With everything her parents have sacrificed to make her cushy life a
reality, Mei can't bring herself to tell them the truth--that she (1)
hates germs, (2) falls asleep in biology lectures, and (3) has a crush
on her classmate Darren Takahashi, who is decidedly not Taiwanese.
But when Mei reconnects with her brother, Xing, who is estranged from
the family for dating the wrong woman, Mei starts to wonder if all the
secrets are truly worth it. Can she find a way to be herself, whoever
that is, before her web of lies unravels?
From debut author Gloria Chao comes a hilarious, heartfelt tale of how,
unlike the panda, life isn't always so black and white.