I was intrigued by the title and the first few chapters of this book. However, like many other reviewers, I found that the story seemed to go on for quite a while and the changes in time were awkward. Some of the characters just seemed to appear from nowhere or drift away without notice, which made names and backstories confusing. The story itself was heart wrenching and I thought the portrayal of the immigrant story offered a perspective I personally liked. However, the ending fell flat for me and I finished the book feeling unsatisfied.

The characters are compelling and the story unfolds naturally. The stylistic pages of one or two sentences felt out of place and took me out of the story. The ending felt abrupt and unresolved, but maybe that was the intent.

Love Can't Feed You by Cherry Lou Sy is a beautifully written novel about a young woman who emigrated from the Philippines to the United States. The character development of the protagonist, Queenie, is vivid and very realistic. The book explores issues of coming of age and femininity as well mother-daughter relationships.

Most of the book is very sad and depressing. While on one hand this is the reality of immigration, I found the book to be so upsetting it was very hard to read. Queenie struggles with her identity which involved exploration of sexuality including acting as a sex worker. Again, this is a reality that occurs but the reader should be prepared for some graphic scenes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

‘How do I tell him that this psychological gymnastics routine is a result of over three hundred years of Spanish rule, the Japanese and American occupations, and how over the decades the country once known as “The Pearl of the Orient” became a cesspool of crime and poverty, falling apart from the corruption of the wealthy families that control all aspects of society, from the cheap TV and film entertainment to the monopoly of industries?’

‘Love Can’t Feed You’ is a struggling immigrant tale, with writing that struggles in solidarity with the plot. Writing and publishing is a monumental task, and congratulations to the author on getting the project to this stage, but ultimately it adds nothing to a genre already teeming with absent father, emotional abusive Asian mother, and sexually exploited immigrant women stereotypes. Queenie is the child that forced a shotgun wedding between her mother and father, and is constantly reminded of the burden of her birth. After immigrating to the United States, Queenie finds herself in New York City, a place full of opportunities just out of reach. Ultimately, this leads to her stumbling through her teen years, splintered between American and Filipino culture, making infuriating decisions that have no emotional payoff as a reader.

What Lou Sy Gives Us:
• Unlikeable narrator, Queenie is infuriating and I genuinely can’t figure out why she does what she does
• Tired Filipino/Asian immigrant stereotypes, some of which is very dangerous to perpetuate (SA, DA, etc.)
• Weird time jumps in writing, with loads of repetition and telling not showing prose

2.5/5 stars. The beginning of this book was phenomenal, it gripped me immediately and I read through the first few chapters very quickly as they're all quite short, becoming entranced in Queenie's story. To add on this - the chapters were too short for my liking. It may be a personal preference, but I felt that in some parts the story was jumping around so much that it was hard to visualize the plot in my head. Now, this is a story of family tensions so the plot is not as clear as something like a fantasy novel, so I didn't want to take off any points in my review from that. I also really think that this needs numbered chapters! If it's every going to to be a book club book, it's impossible to talk about specific parts of a book when there are no obviously labeled chapters.

I personally did not like part three, or the ending of the novel. I felt like the story jumped around so much, I had a lot of questions about what was going on with Papa and Ma, and felt very confused through it. To me--the ending, as in the very last page-- felt like the author got tired of writing the book and gave up. Some people may find it more poetic, I personally wasn't a big fan.

Lastly, the illustations of the cover and the flowers at the beginning of each chapter are beautiful. I liked the style of writing, and enjoyed the narration because it's very similar to how real people think. Sometimes books similar to this about someone's life become so wordy and a little bit too thoughtful, because nobody really has such a dense monologue in their head.

Queenie, a Filipino-Chinese girl, migrates to New York with her father and brother to reunite with her mother. Cracks between the family members deepen as they struggle to adjust to their new life, and the move pushes them further apart rather than bringing them closer together. This story dives into Queenie's complicated relationship with her parents, their shared intergenerational trauma, her new friends and relationships, her odd jobs, and her pursuit of education.

The book started out strong with the family's arrival in America, but the plot slowed down and became more hazy and directionless. I found the ending to be very abrupt, and there wasn't a sense of closure when I finished reading. This book definitely mirrors life in that conflicts don't always get resolved neatly; we're left with the scars of those who have hurt us and we learn to forgive, forget, or both.

I wish I liked this book more, but I'm glad that it offered a glimpse into Filipino culture and cuisines.

This was a good book. It was intriguing and I was hooked beginning with the cover. The story was interesting learning about a young women growing up and learning about relationships with her mother and her time in the US. Parts of the book felt rushed but overall the story line was very interesting and at times couldn’t stop reading. Cherry Lou Sy outdid herself in this.

I expected to love this book - the cover! the title! the description! And there were parts I found vivid and memorable, especially Queenie's early, jarring moments in the US. But overall, I found it very slow going. Sometimes people compliment nonfiction by saying it's so readable it feels like a novel, and this to me was the opposite - it felt more like a memoir than a work of fiction, in the sense that it felt like a true-to-life recounting versus an edited narrative. I also found the language a bit stilted - for example, sentences like "I overheard her tell one of her girlfriends that his precious compliments send shivers from the nape of her neck to her coccyx" felt distractingly formal. (That said, I just finished reading Matthew Salesses' brilliant Craft in the Real World, and I'm conscious that what reads to me as 'natural' is a function of a dominant culture and norms - so I'm raising it here as an authentic reaction, but trying not to factor it into my judgment.) It just wasn't for me, but I appreciate that it might not have been meant for me. Thanks to Dutton and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

What a title! So true but so dark, Powerful stuff!

There are a lot of things I liked about this because it felt like life: hurried and abrupt and tough. You just never know what's going to happen! These characters were really well developed and I was surprised by the book's contents and happenings. The titular moment brought it all together. Mothers and daughters and families and angst.

I'm kind of depressed now but I liked it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

The life of a Filipino family changes after they migrate to the US. Relatable family with emotional inadequacies, work vs. education, self growth/coming of age, abuse and beauty, women and culture, race and expectations, family, love, money, marriage, resentment and poverty. Repetitious towards the end about her mother and feeling unwanted, her parents’ age gap. The mass attention given to someone in the hospital felt unearned because I only felt distance in the relationships throughout prior. The plot towards the end also felt circular, like we were going nowhere. Which maybe is the point of the h’s life but it was taxing to read. When a new relationship comes out of the of the blue towards the end it’s like…. I would have liked if this was introduced earlier. Overall, still an authentic and grounded depiction of migrant children and their families. The ignorance, the stress of navigating life with messy humans who never learned how to be good parents, reinforcing trauma. The disillusion, the uncertainty, and defining what it means to be a woman. It all felt very real and honest.

*Thank you C.L. Sy and Penguin Group Dutton for the, Love Can't Feed You ARC.

Where do I begin? Oh: I LOVE IT.

The main character Queenie was named after Queen Elizabeth because her mom used to be so taken with Princess Diana. She's also a Chinese-Filipino eldest daughter to parents who resent each other. She, little seventeen-year-old girl, is being put in the middle of their squabbles. She did not want this. She did not ask for this. But both parents whether they're aware of it or not are battling it out with her smack-dab in the middle of the crossfire.

In between the story's linear progress, we are given vignettes from Queenie's memories, all of them stitching the book together in a way that felt supple, satisfying. Not a single space in this novel is wasted. I think this is a mark of good storytelling.

In the vignettes, we understand the characters even further, and in its linear timeline, we are wrenched bodily alongside Queenie as she experiences her life as a young immigrant. She befriends new people, works as a caregiver, have crushes, have crisis after crisis after crisis. And what's even better: these characters she encounters have rich, full lives as well. None of them are perfect and all of them are portrayed exactly as messed up as they feel.
- Yan and his closed-off-ness, his selective honesty and vulnerability, his "sluttiness" as Queenie had pegged
- her Papa and his incendiary rage which is sparked by the gasoline of his traditionalist upbringing and all the skewed beliefs he'd carried with him throughout his life
- her Ma and her burning resentment towards Papa, and by extension towards Queenie as well for being the supposed curse-ender who just ended up being a curse
- Junior and the way he tries to hold on to his youth, the way he's learning that he needs to grow up as quickly as his Ate
- even the side characters Flor, Tita Cynthia, Lucia, Ms. B., Zeus, Masha--see, I can even name them all off the top of my head as if they were my neighbors. Even the characters whose lives Queenie recalled from her memories, the girl who slit her wrists after
They all feel real to me. That's another mark of good storytelling.

My amazement is not just bias--understand, you can give me a book about Filipinos that doesn't pander to foreign eyes and i am immediately in love--it's also plain FACT. This is a good novel through and through. Like the main character in this novel, I'm also a US immigrant, and an eldest daughter, and although the similarities stop there, I felt deeply immersed in this main character's story. My family and I waited more than ten years (TEN YEARS!!!) to legally immigrate in the US, and every bit of the process chipped away certain parts of myself that I'll never get back for better or worse, but I've heard of stories like this one in which people who clung to less legal ways to haul themselves out of their state of life in the countries they've left behind, and this is not just limited to those from the Philippines.

There's a long history of colonization and exploitation that comes with telling stories of my homeland, and I'm so so glad to see that sprinkled throughout the entire novel as well. The cultural landscape of the Philippines which extends to the cultural landscape we each bring with us as we move to other countries is teeming with a long hard-earned resilience (which is forced upon us). There's also that long line of generational trauma that each eldest daughter has to bear and later conquer. We all move forward regardless. That all shows in this book. I think that's another mark of good storytelling.

<i>Massive thanks to Penguin Group Dutton and NetGalley for giving me advanced access to this title!! I'm SO excited for its official release. </i>


note for the publisher about myself:
My primary audience is both Goodreads in which my public profile has 101 friends/followers and counting and where I've also published over 122 reviews. My secondary audience is my queer discord reading club which is comprised of 112+ members and another primarily sapphic reading club which is comprised of 80+ members.