Oh, Sam.

This story is about Stella, but the more I read, the more my heart ached for Sam, her brother, who died nine months before.

Stella captures it perfectly in the chapter "The halfway point." She and Sam lived as two different people: in China, like fluttering butterflies, free and light; in the US, wearing their armor, day after day. And Stella learned that last part from the best: Sam.

On the surface, this book could be pitched as a story about two ex-friends going on a road trip to visit colleges and slowly falling for each other. But that’s just the top layer. Beneath it lies so much more: themes of belonging, expectations, and communication.

Stella never learned how to talk about her feelings. Worse, in her family, no one talks at all. They keep secrets, burying the things that hurt. So, they don’t talk about Sam. Not once. They just go on like he never existed. Alan is the opposite, at least when he’s with Stella. Sunshine Alan wants to fit in so badly. But he also knows those two worlds. I loved their road trip, watching them slowly open up to each other, realizing that even Alan, who seemed to have it all, was struggling too.

But the flashbacks—Stella talking to Sam—were the most precious and intimate moments of all. While reading them, rage and love battled with each other in my chest, along with sadness and frustration. Tears pricked my eyes more than once. And when I finally learned the full truth about Sam, I nearly screamed.

Sweet, sweet Sam, I only got to know you through Stella’s eyes, but I wish we could have met somehow. Please know that you’ll always have a piece of my heart.

Actual rating: 4.5 stars

It’s college application season, but Stella’s mind is elsewhere, as she is grieving the loss of her brother, Sam who passed away at Harvard. Applying to college reminds her of how she lost Sam during college.

This book is deeply moving, personal, and relatable yet comforting at the same time, and the characters are rich and complex. So many pertinent Asian American experiences are captured in this compelling novel, from immigrating to a new country, moving to a new city, the pressures of school and AP classes and being compared to your peers, having parents who don’t understand you and want to keep bad memories in the dark, and my personal favorite, the descriptions of family meals and food.

Stella’s story combines two major stressors in adolescent life - dealing with grief and applying to colleges. Author XiXi Tian did an excellent job capturing the melancholic emotions and mixed feelings of youth, such as comparing yourself academically to other stellar students (Sam as well as her friend Alan) while struggling with school and feeling that you don’t measure up. The story also covers Stella’s move from living with her grandma in China to moving in with her parents in Illinois to LA, which contributes to her feeling of not belonging and also of nostalgia for a better time. As someone who also went to a university in LA, I also appreciated the college tour that Alan and Stella embarks on, where the characters’ impressions of the school also reflects on their current mental state and personal growth.

If you liked reading You’ve Reached Sam (incidentally also about a character named Sam who passed away) or I Am Not Jessica Chen, the themes of loss and the pressure and stress of applying to colleges will seem familiar in this novel.

Special thanks to HarperCollins Children's Books, Quill Tree Books, and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest, independent review.

A trifecta of themes in this book that were melded beautifully.

Sibling loss, young love, and immigrant diaspora straddling multiple countries and states.
This author's teen voice is Stella. A young teen on the cusp of adulthood with the leap from high school to college. Her parents sacrificed so much to give her and her brother, Sam a better life by initially immigrating to the US without them.

The term "satellite babies" was one I unfamiliar prior to this book. The author lays out this concept well thru her fictional characters without rendering harsh judgments. Then there's exploration of the family dynamic with the loss of Sam. What happened? How is the fragmented family coping as a whole and individually without Sam? Finally, Stella's relationship with her beloved grandmother who essentially raised her and her sibling but is a whole world away and aging is explored.

This ARC was provided by the publisher, HarperCollins Children's Books | Quill Tree Books, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

#AlltheWayAroundtheSun #NetGalley

This was a great book that really looked inward at what makes each of us worth of attention and love. Stella is struggling with the sudden death of her older brother, and now her Chinese parents are looking to her to carry all of their hopes for the future. However, Stella has always lived in her brother's shadow, has never been a straight A student, and is generally an outcast. She knows she can't make it to Harvard like her brother did, and frankly, she doesn't want to. Immediately following her brother's death, her family moves to California from a small town in Illinois, and now Stella is dealing with her grief and loneliness on a bigger scale. Her parents decide to have her go on a college visit road trip with her old friend and current "enemy" Alan while they go to China to see her ailing grandmother. This story is very layered, and shows scenes from Stella's past with her brother told in second person POV. As she and Alan visit colleges, they slowly start to reconnect, and Stella starts to open up about her feelings of isolation, grief, and loss. All of this comes to a head when she finally decides not to apply to college, and instead go to a community college. She opens up to her parents and Alan, and starts to heal. A moving story!

4.75/5

After losing her brother, Stella grapples with not only his death but her family dynamic, her identity, and her future. I loved every bit of this novel’s discussion on Asian American culture; not only did I resonate with many of the experiences Stella and Alan face but this book felt like home, comforting and familiar to someone who also grew up in the States as a Chinese American. I adored Stella’s inner monologues addressing Sam, the growth she experiences throughout her college tours, as well as Alan’s struggles with his father.

I only wished this novel explored more of Stella’s life, perhaps friends besides from her short interactions with Morgan or previous experiences in Illinois instead of snippets of common experiences Asian American children face in a non-diverse community.