This was a cute YA coming of age story featuring to Chinese American teens who bond over a shared love of Ping Pong and a desire to build impressive college application resumes. The book does a good job illustrating the parental pressures to be impressive and succeed faced by the two main characters. Good on audio and recommended for fans of authors like Kelly Yang. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review. This was my first book by Andrew Yang and likely not to be my last.

When I bought this for our Overdrive I had never seen this before. And it was so weird because this is the kind of book I search out when I’m looking for YA books. And just as I thought when I saw it, I really enjoyed it.

So because I don’t read the synopsis ever, I went into this thinking it was going to be a romance. And because of this I spent a good bit of it waiting for them to fall for each other. But he spent the entire book crushing on her and then not doing anything about it. I liked that part of it because it’s rare that we get a real look into the man’s head when they have a crush. But don’t go into this making the same mistake I did. This is indeed a coming of age novel.

The only thing I didn’t actually like was the repetitiveness of it. It was constantly talking about him going to different practices, lying to his college admissions coach (and Cassie), and his overbearing parents. But that was it. I think I wanted more ping-pong. I know that sounds stupid, but I did. I think it might be too much Olympics, but I’ve said this before as a sports person I wanted to see more of the sport in the book. But again, it was repetitive and it was only talked about during the mockumentary that Cassie didn’t even seem to like.

As for the characters I loved them all. Felix needed some help but he didn’t want to admit it. In fact, it took him awhile to finally come to terms with that. Especially when he realized that he was actually privileged too when it came to other people. Gaspard was the other person who helped with their mockumentary and he was easily the one with the most sense lol But looking at all 3 of them together, I will say this is a lot more realistic than I was expecting. The pressure, the way they dealt with crushes, the way they dealt with the others? It just really felt like everything that I saw from all my teens all the time at the library.

At the end Felix has learned so much, but we don’t actually get to see his new thinking in action. Once Cassie tells him what he did wrong, he accepts it and then moves about life until it’s over. I was upset by that because I wanted to see if he actually changed. But nope, we don’t get much. But it wasn’t bad. I can see reading more of Andrew Yang. This one was a lot of fun!

This book is a very hyper realistic teen romance. Felix and Cassie’s lives seem to keep crossing paths. Cassie seems to have this mysterious persona around her that draws Felix in and makes him want to get to know her better. With college applications quickly approaching Felix is faced with trying to find a good topic to write about for admissions. Through direction from his admissions coach, he is encouraged to start his own film group and then make a movie to put into a local film festival to make him look more enticing for colleges. Felix could not think of a more interesting person to focus his film on then Cassie. Through making the movie Felix and Cassie are faced with some very personal realizations.
Overall, this is an okay book. I think because it is more realistic than other teen romance books it dragged a bit for me. I did enjoy though how it highlighted the different experiences that many Asian children are faced with culturally. I am not sure how teens will truly respond to this book. It is not a bad one by any means, but if they are looking for a romance this book doesn’t quite fit the normal bill teens might be expecting.
Thank you HarperCollins Books, Quill Tree Books and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advance copy of this title.

A great story about friendship, growth, and what it means to change. When two high schoolers who constantly run into each other end up working on a film, their friendship begins to change... and the question of who they are becoming forces them to face difficult questions. Felix Ma is a high school junior who constantly finds himself into Cassie Chow, a bubbly high school senior. Felix and Cassie begin a friendship and Felix knows he has to do something to make his college app stands out so he decides to make a film and asks Cassie to be the main star... but the story of the film begins to feel a little too real, a little too much about Cassie, and thus the question between what the movie means to both of them begins to change as well as their friendship. Felix has to face difficult questions about himself and how he treats his friends, about the costs of wanting to please his friends but at the cost of hurting his closest friend... and what he's going to do about it. This was a really interesting story about a teen coming to understand his feelings and treatment of people in his life, of growing and trying to decide who he wants to be. Felix isn't a bad person, he is growing and he is learning to change, his friendship with Cassie was really the highlight of the story and I really enjoyed how this book ended. This is a great read for anyone who enjoys a coming of age story.

*Thanks Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books, Quill Tree Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*