"A story that's sure to stick with you for a long time."
--BuzzFeed
"More than a coming-of-age novel." --School Library Journal
"[An] inventive, deeply heartfelt love story that explores
connections of many kinds." --Booklist
A teen outcast is simultaneously swept up in a whirlwind romance and
down a rabbit hole of dark family secrets when another Taiwanese family
moves to her small, predominantly white midwestern town in this
remarkable novel from the critically acclaimed author of American
Panda.
Seventeen-year-old Ali Chu knows that as the only Asian person at her
school in middle-of-nowhere Indiana, she must be bland as white toast to
survive. This means swapping her congee lunch for PB&Js, ignoring the
clueless racism from her classmates and teachers, and keeping her mouth
shut when people wrongly call her Allie instead of her actual name,
pronounced Āh-lěe, after the mountain in Taiwan.
Her autopilot existence is disrupted when she finds out that Chase Yu,
the new kid in school, is also Taiwanese. Despite some initial
resistance due to the "they belong together" whispers, Ali and Chase
soon spark a chemistry rooted in competitive martial arts, joking in two
languages, and, most importantly, pushing back against the
discrimination they face.
But when Ali's mom finds out about the relationship, she forces Ali to
end it. As Ali covertly digs into the why behind her mother's
disapproval, she uncovers secrets about her family and Chase that force
her to question everything she thought she knew about life, love, and
her unknowable future.
Snippets of a love story from 19th-century China (a retelling of the
Chinese folktale The Butterfly Lovers) are interspersed with Ali's
narrative and intertwined with her fate.
