“When eighteen-year-old Ever Wong’s parents send her from Ohio to Taiwan to study Mandarin for the summer, she finds herself thrust among the very over-achieving kids her parents have always wanted her to be, including Rick Woo, the Yale-bound prodigy profiled in the Chinese newspapers since they were nine—and her parents’ yardstick for her never-measuring-up life.
Unbeknownst to her parents, however, the program is actually an infamous teen meet-market nicknamed Loveboat, where the kids are more into clubbing than calligraphy and drinking snake-blood sake than touring sacred shrines.
Free for the first time, Ever sets out to break all her parents’ uber-strict rules—but how far can she go before she breaks her own heart?” - taken from Goodreads.com
Well, this book is it is not exactly what I was expecting (it doesn't take place on a boat) and that was a good thing. I was deeply entrenched in Ever Wong's story of self-exploration in both herself and her culture. The only problem I had was how the love triangle played out and whose heart was broken. I thoroughly enjoyed how the story ended so I am not sure what the second book will be about.
Book two is expected in 2021.
Visit Abigail Hing Wen’s website.
