A gifted tailor in disguise. Three legendary dresses. The competition if a lifetime.
On the fringes if the Great Spice Road, Maia Tamarin works as a seamstress in the shop of her father, once a tailor of renown. She dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land, but as a girl, the best she can hope for us to marry well.
When a royal messenger summons her ailing father to court, Maia poses as his son and travels to the Summer Palace in his place. She know she her life is forfeit if her secret is discovered, but she’ll take that risk to save her family from ruin and achieve her dream of becoming the imperial tailor. There’s just one catch: Maia is one of twelve tailors vying for the job.
The competition is cutthroat, and Maia’s job is further complicated by the unwelcome attention of the court enchanter, Edan, who seems to see straight through her disguise. But nothing could have prepared her for the final challenge: to sew three gowns so dangerously beautiful, it will take a quest to the ends of the earth to complete them…
Tell me, why did I take so long to read this? Spin the Dawn is pitched as Mulan meets Project Runway and with such a unique premise, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this #OwnVoices Asian inspired fantasy. I was wary when I started reading it (because I was really let down by another Asian inspired fantasy last year) but I’m so glad this one didn’t disappoint! Not to sound cheesy or anything but it was so magical! It didn’t take long for me to fall head first into the story and to find myself caring deeply about its characters. 💞
Yesterday I already talked about Looking Ahead to 2020 but I didn’t really cover all the bookish and blogging goals that I hope to achieve this year. I’ve always been one of those people who like the idea of setting goals more than keeping track and achieving them 😅 But I hope that I’ll be able to stick to these ones!
I feel like a broken record every time I say that 2019 was a crazy reading year but it really was! I read over 200 books and I’ve never ever read that much in one year before. But knowing that I can read that much, I’ve set my Goodreads Reading Challenge to 100 books this year.
Goodreads:Frankly In Love Genre: Young Adult Contemporary, Young Adult Romance Panda Rating:
Frank Li is a high school senior living in Southern California. Frank’s parents emigrated from Korea, and have pretty much one big rule for Frank – he must only date Korean girls.
But he’s got strong feelings for a girl in his class, Brit – and she’s not Korean. His friend Joy Song is in the same boat and knows her parents will never accept her Chinese American boyfriend, so they make a pact: they’ll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom.
Frank thinks fake-dating is the perfect plan, but it leaves him wondering if he ever really understood love – or himself – at all.
My heart! I’ve had time to digest my thoughts on Frankly in Love and I’m still not sure if this will even be a semi-decent review. I really suck at writing good reviews y’all, but bear with me and sorry in advance for the rambling and incoherent thoughts! If you want to read a great review for this book I’d recommend checking out CW’s postbecause it is awesome. For those who look at this beautiful and cheerfully colored cover and read the synopsis thinking that you’re getting a lighthearted YA contemporary romance, I’d say adjust your expectations because this story is much more than that. It’s about immigrants, culture, identity and understanding yourself in a world that expects you to be one thing when you so badly just want to be.
Before I dive into my reflection, I want to take a moment to appreciate the friendships in this story; particularly between Frank and Q. They are the epitome of a bromance. Their interactions are so geeky and pure, and I don’t even have the words for how full of warmth they always left me feeling. I felt strongly for Frank’s character, but my love for Q knows no bounds! He’s the one that inspires you to forever protect because he deserves ALL THE GOOD THINGS. There’s a twist to Q’s arc at the end of the book that I kind of felt coming 3/4 of the way through the story, so when it happened I wasn’t necessarily surprised. However, I don’t know why Yoon threw it in because it didn’t add anything or really go anywhere, so that was a little confusing. That said, the scene still left me in tears because everything was ending and I was just so proud of that gorgeous, nerdy-licious, pure nugget. *insert a million heart-eye emojis*
Yoon’s debut was a well-written story full of heartfelt emotion and quirkiness. Frank and his friends are all pretty big huge nerds and that really came out in the way the story was written. I thought it was endearing, but I thought the quirkiness went a little OTT at times, although it did make me more fond of the characters. As I mentioned earlier, this book is less about romance and more an exploration of the immigrant identity, culture, racism and family (the parent-child relationships). The representation in this book was pretty amazing. I learned a lot about Korean culture and norms, and I enjoyed seeing the immigrant story through the eyes of a coming-of-age young adult. Frank’s parents were really racist and I thought it was an interesting perspective showing that other ethnicities can be racist too, which you don’t see a lot in many novels. It was pretty upsetting at times and I wish that Frank stood up to his parents more, even if he didn’t believe they would ever change. I thought all the teens were pretty ‘woke’ though and the discussions on racism and other sensitive topics were done well.
While it’s marketed as a romance, I think that aspect really takes a backseat, although it does stem from Frank’s desire to start dating Brit, a white girl (which is a huge no in his parent’s book). While a lot of the sensitive issues were handled well, my least favorite aspect of the story was how the whole fake-dating situation was dealt with because if there’s one thing I really hate, it’s exactly what Frank did.
Could you see that the situation was heading in this direction? Yes, but I was still a little disappointed that Yoon took it there when it could’ve been avoided. I was also a little ‘meh’ on the whole outcome of Frank’s relationship at the end of the book too. After going through all that drama I thought it would’ve been nice for a happier ending, but knowing that there is apparently going to be a sequel makes me curious to see if there’s a reason Yoon left it this way. That said, all of the disappointing romance drama didn’t massively affect how I felt about the rest of the book because for me it wasn’t about the romance; but it is where points came off on my final rating.
“I feel like I don’t belong anywhere and every day it’s like I live on this weird little planet of my own in exile,” I say all in one breath. […] “I’m not Korean enough. I’m not white enough to be fully American.”
Now’s the part where I reflect lol I’m not Asian-American and I didn’t grow up in America. I did however grow up internationally as a “Third Culture Kid”. From the age of 3, I went to American/International schools in several countries and by the time I hit my mid-twenties and realized that I’d have to move to Indonesia, I was feeling more than a little apprehensive. Indonesia is my passport, is where I was born, is where I came from but I knew almost next to nothing about the place and that was terrifying. I came back and the struggle was on: I wasn’t Indonesian enough to be seen as Indonesian, but I wasn’t foreign enough to be seen as a total foreigner either, and that identity struggle is still something I deal with today. So reading about Frank’s struggle with his identity really hit home. How he compared his relationship with his family to those of his friends and recognizing the stark differences in the warmth and openness was also something that I did growing up. TL;DR although I don’t have the same ‘background’ as Frank, there was so much about the exploration of his identity and relationships that really resonated with me and I think it’s what made this book great for me.
While the ending wasn’t really what I expected it to be, I thought everything was wrapped up nicely. I liked that Frank had a greater sense of optimism and assurance about who he is because despite the not-so-happy ending, there was still a sense of hope to it. Frankly, I fell a lottle in love with the story of Frank Li (yuh, I went there) and I would definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a well-written own-voices story about immigrants, culture and identity. It wasn’t the book that I thought I’d get it was a great story nonetheless.
Have you read Frankly In Love? Were you happy with it or was it different to what you expected?Let’s chat in the comments!
Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life. Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.
“Depression, I opened my mouth to say, but the word refused to take shape. Why was it so hard to talk about this? Why did my mother’s condition feel like this big secret?”
The Astonishing Color of After is a heart-wrenching story of a teenager trying to come to terms with her mother’s suicide and simultaneously exploring a side of her heritage that she never knew before. This isn’t a fast-paced or action-packed read. While filled with beautiful and poetic prose and rich emotions that are captured through the full spectrum of colors, the pace is rather slow. It’s the kind of story that requires savoring because there’s a lot going on. If I think about the range of emotions that I encountered, off the top of my head, I’d say: grief, anger, sadness, desperation, longing, love, regret, and happiness. And it’s not just tiny bursts of these emotions either, but waves of them pulling you in and up and down… Like I said, there’s a lot going on in this story.
We follow Leigh Sanders. Teenager. Chinese-Irish-American. Gifted young artist. Also, someone who experiences the world in color. Literally. They call it Synesthesia. As a result, this book is so rich with it – swirls and whirls of color to describe emotions, events, characters. Then when she loses her mother, Leigh is mired in such deep grief that she sees things in black and white, when one night her mother comes to her as a bright-red beautiful bird. Desperate to understand why her mother was so unhappy, Leigh embarks on a journey which takes her to Taiwan, where she meets her Chinese grandparents for the first time.
I never was big on magical realism but I thought how Pan incorporates elements of it into her story was very fitting. I feel like magical realism plays a big role in a lot of Asian cultures; we have a lot of stories with ghosts, spirits and unlikely magical events that happen in many Asian cultures. I feel that the magical events in this story further highlighted just how affected Leigh was by her mother’s suicide. AsLeigh recalls more memories and events become increasingly bizarre, her desperation to understand the why and how becomes more palpable.
“Here is my mother, with wings instead of hands, and feathers instead of hair. Here is my mother, the reddest of brilliant reds, the color of my love and my fear, all of my fiercest feelings trailing after her in the sky like the tail of a comet.“
I have to be honest–there were moments when this book became too overwhelming for me. Not only because there’s so much going on in the story, but at the heart of it is a profound exploration of depression. I never really understood it when people said they read something and felt triggered, but I finally understood when I read this book. Pan does such a raw portrayal of depression; it’s just very honest and upfront. There’s no ‘explanation’ to depression; it wears many faces and seemingly comes and goes as it pleases. As someone who suffers from depression, reading about how Dory’s life was basically eclipsed by it, was quite terrifying in how relatable it was. So, I definitely had to take breaks between reading and I pushed myself to finish this, but this story was so worth it.
“Once upon a time we were the standard colors of a rainbow, cheery and certain of ourselves. At some point, we all began to stumble into the in-betweens, the murky colors made dark and complicated by resentment and quiet anger.”
This story takes us on a journey of discovery through dealing with depression, grief, love, family and friendship. I was feeling all the feels and crying buckets by the end of this book. Because of its subject matter, this book is undoubtedly one my reads that hit home the hardest. It’s not an easy topic to discuss and it’s definitely not an easy topic to read, but Pan does a truly incredible job of it.
Pan also does an amazing job in capturing the tumultuous thoughts, emotions, hopes and fears of a teenager who goes through an achingly big loss. In her search for answers, Leigh’s character also experienced a rich self-discovery of her Chinese roots and a deep understanding of family and friendship. We are with Leigh as she processes her grief, her confusion, her anger and frustration, and we are also with her as she finally gets her closure and finds peace with the loss of her mother. This is a highly recommended read.
Have you read The Astonishing Color of After? What’d you think of it? Let me know in the comments and let’s chat!
dinipandareads 