On my world, it means hope.

I saw a tweet on this topic that went viral a few weeks ago and thought about replying to it, but I'm pretty much allergic to getting involved in any Twitter drama, so I didn't.

But I do have thoughts.

I mean, basically: I personally disagree.

Everyone's taste is subjective, but speaking as a Definite Adult, I burned out on YA from about 2012-2018. That was around the time when I felt like YA was extremely derivative and same-y and I gave up on the genre in favor of adult indie romance. I honestly thought I'd aged out of YA.

Since 2019, though—which was the year more diverse YA books began to be published, not coincidentally—my love for YA was revived. Suddenly, I was seeing new, fresh narratives. I mean, it would probably be more accurate to say that my love of fantasy as a whole was rejuvenated, as I started reading fantasy in both YA and Adult; both age groups gained more diverse fantasies, and Adult gained more "crossover appeal" fantasies as some would say, though I would describe it as "more accessible, fast-paced fantasies that don't spend 100 pages on worldbuilding before the plot begins."

Regardless, I read more YA now than I did in 2012/2013, and there are still plenty of YA books on my "books I'm looking forward to" list for each year. So no, I don't think YA is getting "worse" (and I definitely disagree that 2011/2012 was the "golden age of YA," bleghhh). I do think, as multiple people have pointed out, YA is currently undergoing an identity crisis and publishers don't seem to know what to do with the genre, so we're seeing a rise of middle grade to take its place.

The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu

Genre: Adult/New Adult, contemporary, romance, coming of age

Content warnings: Hospitalization due to drug abuse

Goodreads

This book annoyed me more than I wanted it to.

I love stories about second-gen Asian Americans, and I also like New Adult coming-of-age stories. I'd read from some reviews that this book was more women's fiction than romance, which I was a little apprehensive about, but then again I enjoyed So We Meet Again by Suzanne Park which was also more women's fiction than romance, so I gave this book a try.

Sadly, this book didn't work for me at all, and I'll explain why.

It's probably most accurate to call this book just a contemporary, New Adult coming of age. The pacing definitely didn't fit a romance—Jasmine and Alex got together before the 50% mark, broke up around the 50% mark, but then reconciled a chapter or two later, and the rest of the plot was about Jasmine getting a new job. Personally, I had lukewarm feelings about Jas and Alex's relationship; the chemistry was meh for me. Then again, I've been disappointed by most of the straight romances I've read lately (and a lot of the queer romances too, though they're a little less annoying to me). The problem was, though, that I also didn't find Jasmine's coming of age story to be that compelling.

Jasmine's character arc, I guess, is going from "stuck working at her parents' donut shop, which she hates, because she isn't passionate about anything" to "getting a job at a digital magazine."

Except the issue is that the original problem presented—Jasmine doesn't know what she's passionate about—is actually never resolved. Jasmine doesn't work at the digital magazine because she's passionate about it; she gets the job because her friend, who was formerly employed by the magazine, refers her there.

And, honestly, I do feel salty about that resolution. I know what it's like to be desperately searching for a job and have to shoot résumés into the internet while your Asian parents are interrogating you every day regarding what your future is going to be like. For Jasmine to get the job just because her friend tells the magazine to hire her feels like such a cop-out, and it glosses over how difficult the job market has been for millennials. How many of us suffer just to get minimum-wage jobs after we have college or even graduate degrees.

I admit that although I know what it's like to be a twenty-something second-gen Asian immigrant who doesn't know what to do with your life, I don't know what it's like to be someone who has no passions. My personal struggle has always been "what kind of job should I have while I try to have a novel-writing career?" But what baffles me is...you don't need to be passionate about your day job? Most people are not passionate about their day job, at all?

Jasmine talks so frequently about how she hates working at her parents' donut shop, yet she's apparently been half-assing her job search for a year because she's not passionate about any of the job listings. This just did not compute to me. After I finished law school, I was so desperate for a job that I even applied to internships. If she was really that desperate to escape the titular "Donut Trap," she should be sending her résumé everywhere and making up stories about how she loves every single employer. This also applies to her parents' initial disapproval of her digital magazine job; I can understand her Asian parents pressuring her to find a stable career path while she was still in college, but not by the time she was out of college for a year with no job. After all, she could always switch jobs once she gained some experience, especially while she was still so young (early twenties).

Basically, this book failed in terms of realism for me in multiple ways. And unfortunately, contemporary stories live or die based on realism.

On the topic of Jas's parents, I think it's always a delicate balancing act for Asian American contemporary stories to pose the parental relationship as an obstacle in the story while also resolving it in a way that feels realistic. Unfortunately, many of those books don't feel real to me in that respect, in the sense that you can't write uber-conservative Asian parents and then have them do a 180 and support their child's free spirit in the end. I don't know of any Asian parent who has had such a drastic perspective change, unless perhaps something drastic happened to their child that shakes them up. The Donut Trap isn't quite that bad, but I also didn't really feel convinced by Jas's parents' change of attitude toward her life choices.

While I did enjoy Jas's narrative voice, I found her a hard character to sympathize with. Partly because of the "not passionate about anything" part, and partly because I always found her to be hypocritical—she gets mad that Alex lies about her to his mother, yet she did the exact same thing to her high school boyfriend? She tries to justify it by saying that Alex actively changed facts about her to gain his mother's approval while she just pretended her high school boyfriend didn't exist to her parents because she knew they wouldn't approve, but I fail to see how that difference matters.

Finally, I also want to talk a bit about Jas's college experience, though I'll put that under a spoiler cut since it's not revealed until late in the book.

( ** SPOILERS BELOW ** )


While I usually hate comparing books to other books, I enjoyed So We Meet Again by Suzanne Park as a much better take on a similar theme. Although the protagonist is a bit older (in her late twenties), Jessie Kim also has to move back in with her parents, after being fired from her Wall Street job, and her arc is about rediscovering her passion for cooking that allows her to become a confident entrepreneur who forges her own career path, as well as reconciling her complex relationship with her mother. There's also a romantic subplot, and while it was just okay, it didn't annoy me as much as the one in The Donut Trap did. Just putting it out there, for anyone else who might be looking for an Asian American adult coming of age tale.

The Ivies by Alexa Donne

Genre: YA, thriller

Content warnings: Mention of adult/minor relationship

I've previously read Alexa Donne's space sci-fi/romance, The Stars We Steal, and had mixed feelings about it, but that was probably because I'm very picky when it comes to Persuasion retellings.

A good thriller is one that you can't stop reading, and that was my experience with The Ivies. The beginning was a little slow, but that's not a knock on the book; it definitely needs time to set up the background of competitive college admissions in a boarding school. Once the dead body is found, the book takes off and was honestly impossible for me to put down. Having followed Alexa Donne's YouTube channel, I'm definitely impressed that she managed to put together a thriller with solid pacing and enough red herrings to keep me guessing, and it also had some great things to say about the role of class privilege in college admissions.

I will say that some of the twists were somewhat cliché for the genre, and if you are at all familiar with YA/high school thrillers, you could probably guess what the reveals are. But I had a good time reading this book overall, so I can't really complain.

Sometimes, I get very confused as to what is the "right" way to write a trans character when I look at published fantasy books that do what I thought authors weren't supposed to do with respect to trans characters.

For example, in These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong, there is a trans girl named Kathleen. So many people have praised TVD (I was lukewarm about it), but I haven't seen anyone seem to have a problem with the somewhat detailed depiction of the transphobia Kathleen faces throughout the book when Gong herself isn't a trans woman.

Then, I recently finished The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho.

(**Warning for spoilers.**)

The main protagonist of the novella, Tet Sang (who uses he/him pronouns and passes as male), turns out to be a trans man or a trans masc genderqueer character, but it's revealed when another character sees him without his clothes on and proclaims, "You're a woman?"

Which...hey, I thought authors were NOT supposed to link physiology with gender when writing trans characters?

I mean, on one hand, I think it's unfair when authors of color are disproportionately targeted for writing other marginalized identities "poorly," and I'm sure I'm only noticing these issues in Asian-authored books because I don't read that many white-authored fantasy books these days. But both of these books are critically acclaimed, which makes me, someone who's trying to write a genderqueer character in my current novel, confused about what even is good representation anymore.

Sigh.

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

Genre: YA thriller, dark academia

Content warnings: drug abuse, parental abuse, suicidal ideation, adult/minor relationship (20 vs. 17 years old)

I hate comparing books to other books in my reviews, but when I finished this one, all I could think was that The Ivies by Alexa Donne and Ace of Spades by Faridah Abike-Iyimide were better-executed academic thrillers.

How We Fall Apart really feels like it falls between those two books—it has the murder mystery set in the world of cutthroat academic competition of The Ivies, and it has the Gossip Girl-like mysterious texts that slowly reveal the main characters' secrets the same way as Ace of Spades does (as well as One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus). I enjoyed both The Ivies and Ace of Spades immensely, and I was honestly ready for more dark academia/academic murder mysteries.

But How We Fall Apart doesn't quite measure up to the other books. It doesn't have the cinematic quality of The Ivies, and the character work and messages weren't quite as compelling to me as in Ace of Spades. I am a second generation Asian American; I am aware of the immense pressure Asian Americans feel in high school, although I am over a decade removed from that stage of my life. And while I think it's admirable that How We Fall Apart tries to tackle that experience, I wasn't really left satisfied by how it did so. I don't think it built up enough to the message that familial pressure can cause Asian American teens mental health issues. Plus, while How We Fall Apart left off on the same uneasy ending note that most thrillers end on, it almost felt too uneasy, in a way that made it difficult to sympathize with Nancy in certain ways.

I feel a little bad saying this, but I almost feel like this was a book that would have benefited if the author were older. The author is fairly young, I believe (early-mid twenties?), and I know that personally, I had a very different perspective about my academic experiences as an Asian American when I was a teen/early tween versus ten years later.

Also, having read The Ivies, How We Fall Apart feels a little unrealistic in certain aspects. Like why weren't the police or any of the rich kids' family lawyers involved? And there was one detail that struck me as hard to believe, but I'll put it under a spoiler cut.


( ** SPOILERS BELOW ** )

May the Best Man Win by ZR Ellor

Genre: YA contemporary romance

Content warnings: Transphobia, homophobic slurs, ableism, ableist slurs

DNF.

After browsing the Goodreads reviews for this book, I didn't think I would read it. But when I heard that one of the leads was autistic, I became curious about the autism rep and wanted to read the book for that.

Ultimately, though, I still ended up DNF'ing this book for the exact same reason I originally didn't think I would read it: Because I wasn't interested in reading a book about two characters who were just jerks to all their friends and everyone around them. There are flawed characters, which I love, but I don't love reading about characters whose jerk behavior is validated by the book.

Regarding the autism rep: I don't know if the author is autistic. The rep isn't the worst thing I've ever read, but it didn't feel very organic to me, either. I guess I'd prefer understated autistic traits, as in this book, over overstated autistic traits (my problem with autistic rep in other books), but it kind of felt like Lukas's autism was only brought up in several discrete instances, rather than forming an integral part of how he perceives the world. As just one example, many autistic people struggle with rejection sensitive dysphoria, and given Lukas's negative relationship with his family, I'd expect him to have rejection sensitive dysphoria that would be triggered by situations like Jeremy dumping him for no stated reason. And yet, Lukas's reaction to his breakup seems like one a neurotypical person would have.



Pop Star by Eden Finley

Genre: Adult MM romance

Content warnings: Stalking

Between this book and Inside Affair by Ella Frank, I'm starting to get really fond of celebrity/bodyguard romances where the celebrity hires the bodyguard due to a stalker, and the plot combines romance with suspense over the stalking.

I've been reading a lot of Eden Finley's books recently (this series, her Fake Boyfriend series, and her Steele Brothers duology), and something about her writing style is just so compulsively readable. There's definitely a consistently similar narrative voice to most of her books, but the different tropes lend just enough variety to her books, plus I appreciate the lack of bi-erasure (unlike some other self-published MM romance authors).

Pop Star did feel a little slow in the first half, as the stalking plot doesn't really pick up until 60% of the way or so. I also had a hard time pinning down Harley Valentine's character; he didn't feel as diva-ish as I think he was supposed to be. But I was really moved by Brix's relationship with his dad, and how Harley expresses his love for Brix by caring for his dad. I really do wish more romances focused on acts of caring to express romantic feelings, not only physical intimacy.



Nameless Season 2 by Dean Koontz

Prodigal by TA Moore

Genre: Adult MM romance

I'm honestly not sure whether to categorize this book as "contemporary romance" or "romantic suspense." I guess it's not as action-packed as most other romantic suspense novels, but there is a central mystery to this story.

The basic plot is that when Boyd Maccabbee was a kid, his best friend, Sammy Calloway, disappeared. That disappearance has haunted Boyd and everyone who lives in the town of Cutters Gap ever since. Fifteen years later, Morgan Graves, a petty criminal with a troubled past, is confused when his DNA is run and is found to be a match for Sammy Calloway's. He's brought to Cutters Gap and interacts with Boyd and the members of Sammy's family while everyone tries to figure out whether he's really Sammy or not...and, of course, there's romantic and sexual tension between Morgan and Boyd.

Honestly, some of the writing in the book was fantastic. The plot moved slowly, but the mystery of whether Morgan is Sammy or not keeps you reading, since Boyd wants Morgan to be Sammy while Morgan keeps insisting that it's all some big mistake.

But here's what annoyed me about this book: The ending. The freaking ending.

Which is going under a spoiler cut, obviously.
 

( ** SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING ** )




Dead Man Stalking by TA Moore

Genre: Adult paranormal romance, romantic suspense

Content warnings: Graphic violence, blood play

The Burning God by RF Kuang

Genre: Adult fantasy

Content warnings: Violence, gore, rape, self-harm, cannibalism, drug use

The Burning God is the third book in RF Kuang's Poppy War trilogy. I DNF'ed the first book, loved the second, and was prepared to love the third.

In reality, though, I ended up loving the first two-thirds of The Burning God, and then being massively let down by the ending.

( Spoilers below )

I have a lot of thoughts about retellings.

In general, I prefer retellings to engage with the major themes/messages of the original story (the exceptions of course being racism, homophobia, ableism, etc.), otherwise I feel like...what's the point of writing a retelling if you're going to change the fundamental themes of the story? After all, there are plenty of stories that are *inspired by X* rather than being a *retelling* of X.

Let's talk about retellings of Jane Austen's Persuasion specifically, since I happen to read a lot of those.

*spoiler alert for Persuasion, in case you haven't read it and want to*

I've seen a number of Persuasion retellings in which the Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth characters break up either due to a misunderstanding or for actually good reasons (i.e. the Anne Elliot character has to stay with her family/home due to reasons of obligation/duty instead of leaving with Wentworth).

However, in the original story, the whole point is that Anne Elliot is persuaded into breaking up with Wentworth for all the wrong reasons.

And I truly feel that changing that fundamental part of the story majorly changes the overall theme of the story.

I'm honestly curious as to why so many authors want to change this aspect of Persuasion. My strong suspicion is that many authors don't like the idea that their protagonist made a bad decision for bad reasons by listening to the wrong advice.

I don't understand wanting to avoid that, though, because that mistake is what gives Anne Elliot a character arc.

Here's another reason why I'm against changing that aspect of Persuasion: Because I feel like the regret and angst is not, or shouldn't be, nearly as strong if Anne Elliot/Frederick Wentworth break up either due to a misunderstanding or for good reason.

If a misunderstanding happens, therefore Anne Elliot/Frederick Wentworth feel (falsely) justified in the break up, why would they regret breaking up for eight years? That goes doubly if they actually had a good reason to break up.

To me, it kind of destroys the fundamental basis for their angst, which is the main point of Persuasion.

/end rant

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to try to be on social media more, and that includes trying to blog more. It's hard to explain, but staying at home all the time in 2020 somehow killed my ability to articulate thoughts enough to write blog posts, and I'd like to change that if I can (even though, yes, I'm still at home for the foreseeable future).

Anyway, I'm starting my 2021 blogging journey with...an honestly weird topic, but I guess I Have Thoughts on weird stuff, so...here we go.

It's not often that I blacklist authors; my criteria has generally been only if they write racist/transphobic/etc. content into their books. Sometimes I'll also blacklist them if I've seen them be assholes on Twitter, but I'm not on Twitter nearly enough to witness bad behavior from most authors, so *shrug*.

However. I'm leaning heavily toward blacklisting any authors who support KM Szpara's books.

( Warning: The following includes discussions of books that include sexual assault. )