My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
From the cover:
"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?"
I can't get over how much this book made me feel. I expected it to be good, but I did not expect it to stir up so many different emotions. I both couldn't put it down and had to take a break between chapters to sort through everything, so most of my day yesterday was a weird yo-yo of me reading a chapter, closing the book and holding it while I sat there and felt things, and then opening the book back up.
I loved getting to know Mei and being able to see the similarities and differences between her culture and upbringing and my own, and I loved even more that Mei got to do the same thing after observing her friends' relationships with their families in comparison with her own. This story wasn't just Mei learning how to be true to herself, it was her realizing that what she had experienced as Taiwanese culture was only one interpretation of that culture, and that there were lots of ways to respect her parents' customs while still being who she was.
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