I'd like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing a chance at reading this really cute book.

Love & Resistance is a book about a girl who is targeted because of her race by a group of popular girls who make it their priority to set harsh boundaries and walls between them and those they consider beneath them. The girl herself is Asian and normally is a loner, quiet, and does not like to get involved with people she does not know. She is new to town (her mother travels a lot) and she doesn't get time to settle down and or make friends, but she has encountered racism.

One day at lunch, she sits next to a really pretty guy from her French class and they strike up a friendship and a quick romance. On a day when they were doing extra work in the science lab, the popular girl who spends a lot of time blogging / making influencer videos comes in and starts making comments about all the girls who are non white. The girl sticks up for her classmates which puts a target on her back. She goes through some tough bullying from the popular girl. Meanwhile, she gets invited to a group of people that seem to be a secret club that hits back against racism and bullying.

It's sad that a book that focuses on bullying and sticking up for those who share the same cred as you has a better job handling the romance than the actual message / morale of the story. The story really needed something big to happen and an escalation to the principal or superintendent of the school. Instead, teachers are non existent. There is also a point in which the mother finds out and wants to step in / handle it, but the girl says no. Her mother is pretty non-existent in the book as it is.

To me, it just didn't feel that authentic or 'real'. I wanted some serious actions or consequences to go down, but the fight always seemed to trickle off into someone explaining something away or never quite hitting the mark why bullying or racism is wrong.