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Review: You Have a Match by Emma Lord

Thank you to Wednesday Books for sending me an ARC of the book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. All quotes are from an advance copy and are subject to change in final publication.

4.5/5 stars

Synopsis: When Abby signs up for a DNA service, it’s mainly to give her friend and secret love interest, Leo, a nudge. After all, she knows who she is already: Avid photographer. Injury-prone tree climber. Best friend to Leo and Connie…although ever since the B.E.I. (Big Embarrassing Incident) with Leo, things have been awkward on that front.

But she didn’t know she’s a younger sister.

When the DNA service reveals Abby has a secret sister, shimmery-haired Instagram star Savannah Tully, it’s hard to believe they’re from the same planet, never mind the same parents—especially considering Savannah, queen of green smoothies, is only a year and a half older than Abby herself.

The logical course of action? Meet up at summer camp (obviously) and figure out why Abby’s parents gave Savvy up for adoption. But there are complications: Savvy is a rigid rule-follower and total narc. Leo is the camp’s co-chef, putting Abby’s growing feelings for him on blast. And her parents have a secret that threatens to unravel everything.

But part of life is showing up, leaning in, and learning to fit all your awkward pieces together. Because sometimes, the hardest things can also be the best ones.

Emma Lord’s debut, Tweet Cute, is one of my comfort reads for rainy days, so I had high hopes for her sophomore novel. With a knack for sort of wacky, but nonetheless fun and heartwarming plots, Lord is quickly becoming one of my favorite contemporary authors as she continues to interweave complex family relationships and emotions in an extremely relatable way. However, it is important to note that You Have a Match contains multiple Harry Potter references throughout the book, so I would just be mindful of that for readers who are trying to avoid engaging with Rowling’s work as much as possible.

As someone who has literally never attended camp before in her entire life, You Have a Match was a surprisingly nostalgic and charming read. Although I didn’t have any camp-related memories of my own to reminisce over, I used to devour the Camp Confidential series by Melissa J. Morgan, and You Have a Match dug up old memories of conspiring and whispering with my cousin and getting up to mischief with my friends from orchestra after hours of practicing together. There are some books that, while far from perfect, still manage to leave their mark because they come into your life at exactly the right time, and this was definitely the case for me. Maybe it was the childhood best friends to lovers of it all, maybe it was the sheer The Parent Trap vibes, but whatever it was, You Have a Match transformed me into a puddle of tears.

If you learn to capture a feeling, he told me, it’ll always be louder than words.

The Characters: Annie and Halle Abby and Savvy and Camp Confidential

One of the things that I love most about reading recent YA contemporaries is seeing different manifestations of anxiety through different characters; I genuinely believe that if I had had some of these books when I was in high school, I would have realized that I had anxiety a lot sooner. On the surface, our narrator, Abby Day, seems like a reckless, impulsive, conflict-avoiding teen who’s struggling in school, but as multiple people point out during the book, a lot of what Abby sees as her most negative traits are actually caused by anxiety. She’s used to staying silent and repressing her own feelings in order to keep the peace, but throughout her time at Camp Reynolds, where she’s conspiring with her sister to uncover the mystery of their parents’ past, Abby learns how to be brave and advocate for herself and what she wants. And, thanks to Savvy, Abby finally knows what that is.

Savannah “Savvy” Tully is #goals. She’s a wellness machine with an Instagram following of half a million people, and her fans are even known as Savanatics. She’s also the complete opposite of her younger sister Abby. Savvy has a need for control that Abby can’t relate to, one that makes her seem less approachable, but Savvy’s grip on her life actually comes from her desire for freedom. When she’s in control, it means other people aren’t, and for Savvy, that almost feels like autonomy. Savvy and Abby both have something to learn from the other, even as they’re just barely starting to get to know each other and far from figuring out how to be sisters after so many years.

Abby and Savvy are naturally the most well-developed characters in You Have a Match because it is their story, but I also grew very fond of their friends, Leo, Connie, Mickey, and Finn. More than anything, I really appreciated how Leo, Mickey, and Finn frequently call Abby out on her snap judgments of Savvy. While they all develop their own relationships with Abby and Savvy as individuals, the other campers are still strong advocates of their friends, and challenge Abby about her attitude towards Savvy and encourage her to give her sister a chance. Friends should support you and lift you up, but they should also care enough to call you out when you’re in the wrong and help you do better – both Abby and savvy are lucky to have friends who do just that.

Brave. It’s a word I’m still getting used to, after a lifetime of ducking from my problems. But maybe I’m growing into it, in my own way. A little less running and a little more talking. A little less wandering and a little more found.

The Plot: Found Family (Literally)

At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s 23&Me test actually did reveal they had a full-blooded sibling who had half a million Instagram followers, but also it’s that just barely believable, ridiculous Parent Trap kind of situation that raises the stakes of the book while still being wildly entertaining. You Have a Match is a wild ride from start to finish, but while some of it may require a suspension of belief in order to enjoy the read, there’s an honesty and rawness to the emotions and experiences of the characters that I, for one, wasn’t expecting.

When we meet Abby, she’s still grieving her late grandfather, Poppy, and struggling to navigate a world without him in it. On top of that, her parents are so intent on helping her get her grades up that she barely has any free time between school and tutoring, which means things between her and her two best friends, Connie and Leo, are still pretty awkward because of the BEI – big embarrassing incident. But when Abby decides to do a DNA test to be supportive of Leo, she never expects to receive a message from Savvy, telling her they’re full-blooded sisters and asking if she wants to meet. They hatch a plot to go to Camp Reynolds together to try and uncover the reason why Abby’s parents put Savvy up for adoption, and why they never told Abby she had a sister, but their shared history is far more complicated than either of them could have expected.

The plot of You Have a Match is pretty far-fetched, to say the least, but the heart of the story contains messages that can hit home even for people who don’t find a surprise sibling through an ancestry website. Emma Lord tackles sibling relationships, family communication, loss, change, and trying to find a sense of belonging, but perhaps most impressively of all, she almost made me want to go to summer camp.

I think in life you can know you’re loved without peering too closely at the edges of it.

Reasons to Recommend You Have a Match

Abby’s friendship with Connie and Leo may have been my favorite part of the book because it is simultaneously so simple and not simple at all. They’re there for each other unconditionally, without question and without hesitation, and yet there is an undeniable awkwardness hanging over their little group because of Abby’s feelings for Leo and how they might shift the group dynamic. This was, unfortunately, all too relatable, because I was in the same exact situation with two other friends not just once, but twice. With the same people, just different roles. RIP high school Lauren, am I right.

But change is scary, and all of the characters work through that in their own ways. The misunderstanding between Abby and Connie is directly caused by Connie’s fear of change which, in some ways, is shared by Abby, who is desperately trying to get back some sense of normality after the BEI with Leo. Abby also has to contend with the fact that meeting Savvy means her life is inexplicably changed forever, and she’s initially not sure if that change is welcome. Is her relationship with Savvy worth altering the one she has with her parents, or is she making a huge mistake by digging into a past that’s been hidden from her? Abby can’t know for sure, so she just has to take a leap of faith – we all do, sometimes, and I think I needed that reminder.

And while change can be a great thing, it can also bring with it a peculiar kind of grief. Abby is no stranger to grief, but after meeting Savvy, she starts to grieve the relationship she once had with her parents before she realizes that what comes after might just be better after all. Abby discovers what she wants, how to ask for it, and how to make it happen while she’s at Camp Reynolds; she learns how to be brave, and that grounds her even when it feels like her entire world is shifting.

Overall, You Have a Match evoked feelings of nostalgia and wistfulness that I barely even knew I had about high school – because good God, who wants to go back to high school?? I recommend this to fans of The Parent Trap and Jenny Han, and anyone who wants some ridiculous, heartfelt charm in their lives.

Links for You Have a Match

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookDepository | BookShop | IndieBound

Add it on Goodreads!

Will you be picking up a copy of You Have a Match? Have you, unlike me, actually gone to summer camp and had fun??

Let me know in the comments below!

Book Recs: These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

Thank you to Margaret K. McElderry Books for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. All quotes are from an advance copy and are subject to change in final publication.

Title: These Violent Delights

Author: Chloe Gong

Publication Date: November 17th, 2020

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Source: Digital ARC via publisher

Age Range & Genre: YA, historical fantasy, romance

Content warnings: murder, gore, violence, death, loss of loved ones, disease/sickness, self-harm & suicide, transphobia, racism, colonialism, insects

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Comparative Titles: Pros and Many, Many Cons

This post is brought to you by people apparently claiming that anything containing a magic school or a school in general is a rip off of Harry Potter and is sponsored by my ensuing indignation and outrage.

Every once in a while, I’ll be doom-scrolling on Twitter and will come across a screenshot from Goodreads, which, despite its name, never actually means anything good, at least in terms of book-ish opinions. I think the most recent one that personally infuriated me was someone’s review of The Poppy War, comparing it to Harry Potter because – and I kid you not – the main character attends an academy. That’s it. Because comparing a series that is written by a woman of color and is based on the second Sino-Japanese War to one written by a known terf is perfectly acceptable. The existence of an academy is, for some people, enough to prove that the author directly took inspiration from one series in particular instead of literally anything else. That was probably the last straw for me, because at this point, I’m just tired.

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Review: Malcolm and Me by Robin Farmer

4/5 stars

Title: Malcolm and Me

Author: Robin Farmer

Publication Date: November 17, 2020

Publisher: SparkPress

Genre and age range: historical fiction, middle grade

Many thanks to Paige Herbert (publicist) for reaching out and providing a digital copy for an honest and unbiased review.

Something my history teacher used to say a lot was, “History may not exactly repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.” Reading Malcolm and Me, I could see so much of what he meant, though it confused me at the time. Robin Farmer finds the connections between her own past during the Black Power Movement and the world we live in today. As someone with a little brother and cousin around Roberta’s age, I found myself questioning what it might mean for them to read this with me (Aiden is starting it as we speak!).

The genius of Robin Farmer’s novel is that although I’d class it as middle grade/early YA, it creates a familiar enough environment that feels good to learn in, yet challenges young people to consider things that they may be exposed to for the first time. As a character, Roberta is empowering and fun and everything I wished I was – at only 13 years old! We watch Roberta get hit by some of the worst life has to offer a Black girl in Catholic school in the early 70’s in America, and she uses her own genius to pull herself through it all. At such a developmental age it was inspiring to watch her make sense of the world around her, ugly bits and all, using history as inspiration to do what she knows best.

On top of Roberta being the most powerful 13 year old I’ve ever (kinda) met, the novel itself generates and fosters such a deep interest in history and literature. In the middle of her own personal struggles, Roberta reads Malcolm X’s autobiography and builds a relationship with him as a way to cope, which in itself leads her down her own revolutionary path. On the other side of things, she questions the relationship she’s had with God as the traditions of her Catholic school prove to have problematic and tangled roots. She sets the stage for some difficult questions to ask – and very few adults willing to answer them with honesty – and personally, it provided a much-needed perspective, especially as age plays a role.

At its core, Malcolm and Me highlights how Roberta is learning to grow up, which often comes with emotional and spiritual growing pains. All of the new experiences she’s gaining comes with new ways of understanding the world around her, and herself, which collide in her heart and stretch it out to the point of breaking. Much like anyone else, she learns how easy it is to want to hate the people that hurt her, to make them want to see it and soak it in. For a middle-school aged audience and their initial introductions to the complexity of the world, this would be a great novel to read for class, or even with the adults/older siblings in their lives. Again, the genius of this novel is that it pulls out very key experiences for many adolescents’ development while also touching on a highly nuanced perspective, introducing a younger audience to a world that isn’t black and white, which means the people aren’t either.

If there are young people in your life who enjoy reading and rebelling, do you think they’d like reading about Roberta and Malcolm?

On November 17th, you can find it at the following links:

Amazon | Book Depository | Barnes & Noble

Until then, add it on Goodreads!

YARC 2020 Update: Almost There!

The longest/shortest year ever is finally coming to an end, and I’ve already surpassed my original Goodreads challenge of reading at least 60 books!! This is a huge deal for me as I went nearly four years without reading much at all, and reading 50 books last year was a bit of a struggle, so I’m thrilled that I’ve seemed to find a good place with reading again. I’ve already bumped my goal up to 75, but since I just finished my 70th book, I think I’m going to try for 85-90 by January 1, 2021 – wish me luck!

At the beginning of the year, I set a goal of reading 41-50 books by Asian authors in 2020 as a part of the Year of the Asian Reading Challenge hosted by CW, Shealea, Lily, and Vicky. With a little under 2 months left to go to complete the challenge, I thought I’d do a little update on my progress!

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Review: Rent a Boyfriend by Gloria Chao

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Pulse for providing me an ARC of the book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. All quotes are from an advance copy and are subject to change in final publication.

4/5 stars

Title: Rent a Boyfriend

Author: Gloria Chao

Publication Date: November 10, 2020

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Source: Digital ARC via NetGalley

Age Range & Genre: new adult, contemporary, romance

Content warnings: fatphobia, slut shaming, mentions of racism and xenophobia, homophobia, family estrangement

Synopsis: Chloe Wang is nervous to introduce her parents to her boyfriend, because the truth is, she hasn’t met him yet either. She hired him from Rent for Your ’Rents, a company specializing in providing fake boyfriends trained to impress even the most traditional Asian parents.

Drew Chan’s passion is art, but after his parents cut him off for dropping out of college to pursue his dreams, he became a Rent for Your ’Rents employee to keep a roof over his head. Luckily, learning protocols like “Type C parents prefer quiet, kind, zero-PDA gestures” comes naturally to him.

When Chloe rents Drew, the mission is simple: convince her parents fake Drew is worthy of their approval so they’ll stop pressuring her to accept a proposal from Hongbo, the wealthiest (and slimiest) young bachelor in their tight-knit Asian American community.

But when Chloe starts to fall for the real Drew—who, unlike his fake persona, is definitely not ’rent-worthy—her carefully curated life begins to unravel. Can she figure out what she wants before she loses everything?

Around this time last year, I picked up my first ever YA contemporary romance featuring an Asian protagonist. It was a complete game-changer for me, and something I had no idea I had needed so badly prior reading it. Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao came to me at exactly the right time, so when I was approved for an e-ARC of Rent a Boyfriend, I freaked out.

I read American Panda, Gloria Chao’s debut novel, only recently, so it’s even more evident to me how far she’s come since then. Rent a Boyfriend is a story of both Chloe’s and Gloria Chao’s growth, as they explore the nuances in the Chinese diaspora experience and the different ways people express their love – and how the most well-intentioned actions can still cause harm.

The Characters: Chloe Jing-Jing Wang and (An)Drew (Insert Last Name Here)

As much as I love Gloria Chao and what her books personally mean to me, I do have to admit to not always loving her characters. Luckily, this was not the case for Rent a Boyfriend.

Chloe Wang, known to her family as Jing-Jing, has spent her whole life trying to please her parents and not disappoint them by losing face in their exceptionally prestigious, cutthroat community. She gets some reprieve when she’s away at school in Chicago, but coming home to California has become something to dread, especially with her parents pressuring her to accept the sleazy Hongbo’s proposal. At home, Jing-Jing is meek and obedient, and keeps her thoughts to herself in order to keep the peace, but inside, Chloe is dying to express how she really feels and make her parents understand just how deeply their words impact her. But due to a lifelong communication barrier, Chloe is driven to drastic measures in order to convince her parents that Hongbo is not the guy for her.

That’s where Drew comes in. Chloe hires Drew to be Andrew, the perfect Taiwanese boyfriend ideally meant to get Hongbo out of the picture. Andrew is whatever parents want him to be, and has the closet full of college paraphernalia to match. As Chloe’s fake boyfriend, he’s a promising medical student at UChicago, but in reality, Drew is a thoughtful, empathetic artist who was disowned by his parents for following his dreams. He works for Rent for Your ‘Rents to pay the bills, sure, but he also knows firsthand what kinds of fraught familial relationships can drive someone to hiring a significant other in the first place, and he wants to do whatever he can to help, which makes his fake persona, Andrew, even more perfect. With Chloe, though, he doesn’t want to just be Andrew, her fake boyfriend – he wants to be Drew, her hopefully very real boyfriend.

I really enjoyed the progression of Chloe and Drew’s relationship. They (naturally) get off to a pretty rocky start, but once they start to get to know each other outside of the operation, they’re sweet and supportive of each other’s personal journeys. I especially loved the fact that while they definitely help each other, they both realize their self-worth independently.

Making the best decision for you isn’t something you ever have to apologize for.

The Plot: On the first day of Christmas, my fake love gave to me…

Rent a Boyfriend is broken up into Chloe’s trips home: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chinese New Year, and spring break. With every visit, it becomes more and more obvious to Chloe that she can’t continue to be Jing-Jing for her parents and Chloe for everyone else. The problem is, she has no idea how to go about remedying that.

Even though she hires Drew to solve her Hongbo problem, he ends up helping her far more outside of his capacity as a Rent for Your ‘Rents operative. They’ve had vastly different experiences growing up in Asian communities: Drew grew up in a supportive community that banded together because the rest of the world excluded them, and Chloe is used to a hyper-competitive environment born out of the fear that “there can only be one.” Because of this, Drew has a much healthier relationship with Chinese culture than Chloe, while still understanding how difficult it is for her to be so immersed in toxic ideologies.

More than anything else, I think, I had to appreciate the nuances in Chloe’s relationships with her parents the most. Her dad starts off in a pretty familiar place (for me, at least) as a stoic Asian father who keeps important information from his child for what he thinks is their best interest. It was so refreshing to see that stereotypical Asian dad realize his mistakes and own up to them, and actually start to do better by his daughter.

I completely understood Chloe’s frustrations with her parents and was rooting for her from start to finish, and that’s what made it even more important to me that there were good moments with her parents too. She’s able to crack jokes and laugh with her mom multiple times throughout the course of the book, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that Chloe is constantly being harmed by her mom’s actions and words and shows just how complicated familial relationships can be.

I choose the life I want, not the one my parents want.

Reasons to Recommend Rent a Boyfriend

Family relationships are complicated – that pretty much goes without saying. We all have our own ideas of what love should look like and feel like, and some manifestations can be extremely harmful to the people we care about the most. There’s more to language barriers between immigrant parents and their children than language itself, and it requires a lot of communication to find that middle ground between generations. And sometimes, communication isn’t enough, and a third party is necessary to help the family start to heal. I’m really glad that Gloria Chao acknowledges this through Chloe’s ideas for Rent for Your ‘Rents’ expansion, and I hope it’s a step forward more families can take together in the future.

While the humor in Rent a Boyfriend wasn’t always my cup of tea, I can see a lot of Chloe and Drew’s jokes landing with other members of Subtle Asian Traits on Facebook. Chang’e is one of my favorite figures from Chinese mythology, and I love how she’s incorporated into their relationship and Drew’s art. There are so many nods to Chinese culture throughout the book, some subtle and some not, and while my family doesn’t personally uphold many of the traditions and superstitions mentioned, they were all still so familiar that it felt like coming home.

Gloria Chao’s writing shines best when it’s straight-forward and straight from the heart, when she’s able to write about painful, fraught, and nuanced situations from firsthand experience, and I’m so glad a book like Rent a Boyfriend exists.

Links for Rent a Boyfriend

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Indie Bound

Add it on Goodreads!

Will you be picking up a copy of Rent a Boyfriend?

Also, I could totally see this becoming a rom-com – who would you cast as Drew and Chloe? Or Hongbo (lmao!!)?

Let me know in the comments below!

Book Recs: Disney All Grown-Up

A dream is a wish your heart makes.

Whether this list is a dream or a nightmare…we shall see.

This book rec list has been in the works for quite some time, but it’s finally here! Lauren and I started this list at the start of Love Yo Shelf so it’s only right that I finish it at the end of our first year. This list is just a small peek into the wild conspiracy-theory-type conversations we have about books, so some of these comparisons are a bit of a stretch (okay, a HUGE leap and then some), and the book versions of these princesses are a bit more jaded than the singing-with-animals ones we’re used to. Nonetheless, our bookish protagonists feature some of my favorite elements from Disney (and DreamWorks) movies that definitely made me view them all in a different light.

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