e-ALC, 07:25:14
Narrated by: Slu-See Hung
Release Date: September 30, 2025
Published by: HarperCollins
Read from: September 29, 2025
Stand-alone
Source: Netgalley (I received a free ALC from Netgalley and the publisher. I also received a physical ARC from the ALA conference. This did nothing to influence my review)
Content Warning: Grief, Death, Drug Use, Drug Abuse (OD’ed. Not shown on page, but there is a description of what might have happened on page), Cancer, Terminal Illness
For Readers Interested In: Audio, Contemp Romance, Contemporary, Family Diversity, Own Voices, Personal Issues, Racial/Ethnic Diversity (Asian), Realistic Fiction, Recommended, Romance, Tw/CW, YAFrom the acclaimed author of This Place is Still Beautiful comes an evocative, achingly romantic road trip story about grief, diasporic identities, and deep-buried secrets that haunt us, perfect for fans of Past Lives and The Farewell.
Stella Chen’s life ground to a halt when her brother unexpectedly passed away a year ago. Raised together by their grandmother in the Chinese countryside before rejoining their parents in the United States, his absence destroys the connective tissue in her family. With another jarring move her senior year, from rural Illinois to unfamiliar surroundings in San Diego, she is left alone and adrift in her family’s suffocating silence and the void of unanswered questions around her brother’s death.
So when Stella’s parents force her to join her estranged childhood friend Alan Zhao for a college tour all over California, Stella dreads it. Alan is a reminder of everything Stella wishes she could be — popular, gregarious, unburdened — and a reminder of how lost she is.
As this road trip takes Stella and Alan down beautiful coastlines and through fraught family dynamics, Stella can’t help but feel the spark of why she and Alan were once so close. Before long, they find themselves pulled into each other’s orbits, forcing unspoken feelings and long-hidden truths into the light.
*MY THOUGHTS*
I enjoyed this, but I really would have appreciated a heads up about the reasoning her brother was gone. I had a feeling, but nothing is confirmed until late in the story. And since this was recommended to me, I would have liked to know one of my triggers was in here.
The story/plot was great. I can relate to trying to be enough and then trying to please my parents when I first started college by trying to do so by any means necessary. And unfortunately I can also relate to someone very close to me abusing drugs and making bad choices surrounding them. This was a hard one for me to get through. I had to skip around some parts so that I could still get the story, but also skip the parts that were harmful to me.
The feeling in this was so real. She had so much pressure, even when the person who caused a lot of it was gone. I felt very sad after for her. She had a lot of things adding up on her and her parents barely knew that they were doing the very same thing to her. It was so toxic. I felt so bad for her. She was grieving and still had to be the perfect daughter, even when they weren’t around. I wanted to give her a hug.
The characters were ok. Her parents were terrible. The way they lied to her about something so serious. What if something happened and it got more aggressive? That was completely ridiculous. And the way they didn’t think twice about what could have happened? Ugh it was annoying. But she was sad and I hated that she had to go through this. The person she went on the tour with was so sweet. He tried to ignore all the things that she was going through, but that was also his first mistake. She let him have it because of that lol
The romance was ok, but it was a side story to this. I actually didn’t feel like it needed to be there in the first place. But even still, it made some drama for the ride so I’ll allow it. I thought the grand gesture thing was cute tho. It was something that only she would have gotten. It was cute watching them have fun and find each other along the ride and then even cuter watching him trying to get her to talk to him after ward.
I’m not sure I would have picked this up if I knew what it was about. Can we normalize putting the reason they passed away in the synopsis? This was not ok. I felt a little blindsided and since I had agreed to read and review it and I was already so far in, I just finished it. I’m just saying, someone should have said something.
Overall, I give this
