e-Audio, 08:14:48
Narrated by: Austin Ku
Release Date: July 16, 2024
Published by: Quill Tree Books
Read from: August 4-5, 2024
Stand-alone
Source: Library’s Libby
Content Warning:
For Readers Interested In: Coming of Age, Romance, Contemporary, Literary, Racial/Ethnic Diversity (Chinese), Realistic Fiction, YAPerfect for fans of Ben Philippe and Mary H. K. Choi, this charming, insightful YA novel follows two high school students who form a complicated, ground-shifting bond while filming a mockumentary.
On the eve of Felix Ma’s junior year of high school, his parents hires a college admissions coach to help him find a marketable activity. Cynically trawling for extracurricular excellence, Felix decides to start a film club at school.
But then he meets Cassie Chow, a bubbly high school senior who shares Felix’s anxieties about the future and complicated relationship with parental expectations. Felix feels drawn to Cassie for reasons he can’t quite articulate, so as an excuse to see her more, Felix invites Cassie to star in his short film.
While the project starts out as a lighthearted mockumentary, at the urging of Felix’s college admissions coach, who wants to turn the film into college essay material, it soon morphs into a serious drama about the emotional scars that parents leave on their kids. As Felix and Cassie uncover their most painful memories, Cassie starts to balk at opening her wounds for the camera.
With his parents and college admissions coach hot on his heels, Felix discovers painful truths about himself and his past—and must decide whether academic achievement is worth losing his closest friend.
*MY THOUGHTS*
When I bought this for our Overdrive I had never seen this before. And it was so weird because this is the kind of book I search out when I’m looking for YA books. And just as I thought when I saw it, I really enjoyed it.
So because I don’t read the synopsis ever, I went into this thinking it was going to be a romance. And because of this I spent a good bit of it waiting for them to fall for each other. But he spent the entire book crushing on her and then not doing anything about it. I liked that part of it because it’s rare that we get a real look into the man’s head when they have a crush. But don’t go into this making the same mistake I did. This is indeed a coming of age novel.
The only thing I didn’t actually like was the repetitiveness of it. It was constantly talking about him going to different practices, lying to his college admissions coach (and Cassie), and his overbearing parents. But that was it. I think I wanted more ping-pong. I know that sounds stupid, but I did. I think it might be too much Olympics, but I’ve said this before as a sports person I wanted to see more of the sport in the book. But again, it was repetitive and it was only talked about during the mockumentary that Cassie didn’t even seem to like.
As for the characters I loved them all. Felix needed some help but he didn’t want to admit it. In fact, it took him awhile to finally come to terms with that. Especially when he realized that he was actually privileged too when it came to other people. Gaspard was the other person who helped with their mockumentary and he was easily the one with the most sense lol But looking at all 3 of them together, I will say this is a lot more realistic than I was expecting. The pressure, the way they dealt with crushes, the way they dealt with the others? It just really felt like everything that I saw from all my teens all the time at the library.
At the end Felix has learned so much, but we don’t actually get to see his new thinking in action. Once Cassie tells him what he did wrong, he accepts it and then moves about life until it’s over. I was upset by that because I wanted to see if he actually changed. But nope, we don’t get much. But it wasn’t bad. I can see reading more of Andrew Yang. This one was a lot of fun!
Overall, I give this
