Tag: YA Contemporary

Book Review: A Pho Love Story by Loan Le

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A Pho Love Story
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s UK
Pub Date: 18 February 2021
Genre: YA Contemporary

Panda Rating:

(actual rating: 3.75 pandas rounded up!)

📖 SYNOPSIS

All’s fair in love, war and noodles . . .

If Bao Nguyen had to describe himself, he’d say he was a rock. Steady and strong, but not particularly interesting. His grades are average, his social status unremarkable. He works at his parents’ pho restaurant, and even there, he is his parents’ fifth favorite employee.

If Linh Mai had to describe herself, she’d say she was a firecracker. Stable when unlit, but full of potential for joy and spark and fire. She loves art, and she dreams of making a career of it one day. The only problem? Her parents rely on her in ways they’re not willing to admit, including expecting her to work practically full-time at their family’s pho restaurant.

For decades, the Mais and the Nguyens have been at odds, having owned competing, neighboring pho restaurants. Bao and Linh have resolved never to befriend each other, for fear of pushing too far and bringing on undue heartbreak. But when a chance encounter brings Linh and Bao closer, sparks fly . . .

Can Linh and Bao’s love survive in the midst of feuding families and complicated histories?

This delicious debut is perfect for fans of When Dimple Met Rishi and To All the Boys I’ve Love Before.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Racism, cultural appropriation, Vietnam War mentioned, death of family member (recounted)

TL;DR: While I can see the appeal of this book, especially for the young adult audience, but I unfortunately didn’t end up loving it as much as I thought I would. Part of that might have to do with my elevated expectations but, despite the interesting family history and the blossoming romance between Bao and Linh, it was the pacing that really did it for me. The pacing dragged the story down immensely and with the ‘slice-of-life’ style of storytelling, it made for an incredibly slow read. That said, I did enjoy the family drama, learning about Vietnamese history, the Vietnamese food, the journey to find one’s passion, and of course, all the art. If any of that sounds appealing to you, I would recommend this coming-of-age contemporary!

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Blog Tour Spotlight: Right Beside You by Tucker Shaw

Dini @ dinipandareads3 Comments

Hi friends, as part of the blog tour hosted by TBR & Beyond Tours I’m shining a spotlight on a new YA queer contemporary: Right Beside You by Tucker Shaw.

Click the banner above or here to check out the other incredible bloggers on the blog tour!

Right Beside You
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Publication Date: 29 April 2025
Genre: YA Queer Contemporary
Rep: Queer, LGBTQIA+, Chronic illness

📖 SYNOPSIS

In this fresh, speculative blend of queer romance and coming-of-age, Eddie meets Theo in present-day New York and Francis in a New York of the past… torn between eras and his heart, he must make a decision that will change his life forever.

High school has just ended and Eddie is at a loss for what’s next. He had a falling out with his best friend, and he never really related to the rest of his peers in the sleepy Colorado town he calls home. The future is bleak.

Until his ancient and eccentric great aunt Cookie asks him to care for her in New York City as she recuperates from an illness. Eddie leaps at the opportunity. Soon after he arrives at her tiny Greenwich Village apartment, homebound Cookie asks Eddie to use her vintage polaroid camera to snap pictures of her favorite places she can no longer visit. But something’s unusual about this camera. When he takes a photo, he’s launched back in time to an entirely different New York of the early 20th century.

As Eddie explores the underground queer life of the Roaring 20, he discovers new undercurrents of his own identity. Not to mention a dangerously handsome boy in scuffed boots and tattered stovepipe trousers who keeps popping up in his visions of the past.

But when Eddie begins to develop a crush on the mercurial Francis, a cute baker named Theo enters the picture—and he’s in the present. Caught between timelines and feelings, Eddie must make a decision about what he’s willing to his romantic fantasies of the past or a reality that might just be what he’s wanted all along.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

HIV Epidemic in the US

📚 BUY A COPY

Tucker Shaw’s novel, WHEN YOU CALL MY NAME, follows two gay teenagers during the height of the AIDS crisis in New York City in 1990. In hard times, nothing is more powerful than friendship.

Author’s Socials:
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

Is Right Beside You on your TBR or does it sound like a book you’d want to read?

ARC Review: I Am Not Jessica Chen by Ann Liang

Dini @ dinipandareads9 Comments

Special thanks to HarperCollins for providing a digital ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I Am Not Jessica Chen
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pub Date: 28 January 2025
Genre: YA Contemporary

Panda Rating:

(4.5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

After getting rejected by every single Ivy League she applied to and falling short of all her Asian immigrant parents’ expectations, seventeen-year-old Jenna Chen makes a wish to become her smarter, infinitely more successful Harvard-bound cousin, Jessica Chen—only for her wish to come true. Literally.

Now trapped inside Jessica’s body, with access to Jessica’s most private journals and secrets, Jenna soon discovers that being the top student at the elite, highly competitive Havenwood Private Academy isn’t quite what she imagined. Worse, as everyone—including her own parents—start having trouble remembering who Jenna Chen is, or if she ever even existed, Jenna must decide if playing the role of the perfect daughter and student is worth losing her true self forever.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Blackmail, academic cheating, bullying, anxiety

Okay, can we take a minute to appreciate this cover? It’s already one of my favourites this year so far!

TL;DR: This was my first YA contemporary by Ann Liang but it won’t be my last. I now understand why her books are so well-loved and always come highly recommended. This had strong characters, was packed with emotion, and had a high degree of relatability that I think will apply to all readers. In “I Am Not Jessica Chen”, Liang perfectly captures the highly competitive high school and academic experience, including the pressures teenagers face to do better and achieve more as they equate it to success. Jenna is a complex, relatable and realistic character and I enjoyed watching her journey of self-acceptance unfold. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to all readers!

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Book Review: We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

Dini @ dinipandareads12 Comments

We Are Okay
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pub Date: 14 February 2017
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Fiction

Panda Rating:

(3.5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

You go through life thinking there’s so much you need…. Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother. Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

An intimate whisper that packs an indelible punch , We Are Okay is Nina LaCour at her finest. This gorgeously crafted and achingly honest portrayal of grief will leave you urgent to reach across any distance to reconnect with the people you love.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Death of parent, death of a grandfather from drowning, mental illness, grief

I put off reading this for years because it gave such sad read vibes that I knew I had to be emotionally prepared for it. But seeing as January 2024 seems to have me in my sad reads era, I finally picked it up and yep, we are not okay, Nina LaCour. 🥲 That is, this book was beautiful, sad, touching and healing and I’m so glad that I finally read it.

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Book Review: The Places I’ve Cried in Public by Holly Bourne

Dini @ dinipandareads11 Comments

The Places I’ve Cried in Public
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd.
Pub Date: 3 October 2019
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Fiction

Panda Rating:

(3.5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

Amelie loved Reese. And she thought he loved her. But she’s starting to realise love isn’t supposed to hurt like this. So now she’s retracing their story and untangling what happened by revisiting all the places he made her cry.

Because if she works out what went wrong, perhaps she can finally learn to get over him.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Rape, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, gaslighting, cheating

TL;DR: This was such a painful read to get through. It leaves you feeling a bit helpless as you get a front-row seat to Amelie losing herself to something toxic and retracing her steps to find herself again. This is such an important story and I’m so glad that it exists, especially for young readers, as Bourne does a great job exploring what it means to be in healthy and unhealthy relationships and how to care for yourself in the aftermath. This tackles dark and heavy events that can be triggering so please do check content warnings before reading.

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#FirstLinesFriday: 15 December 2023

Dini @ dinipandareads4 Comments

Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? Here are the rules:

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“Airports are the true chaotic evil.
There are too many things happening around me. Too many people in a hurry, too many people lazing around, too many announcements on the overhead speakers, and way too many tearful goodbyes.”

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ARC Review: My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth

Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

Special thanks to Holiday House for providing an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

Goodreads: My Mechanical Romance
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 31 May 2022
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

Panda Rating:

(4 pandas)

Opposites attract in this battle-robot-building YA romance from the NYT best-selling author of The Atlas Six.

Bel would rather die than think about the future. College apps? You’re funny. Extracurriculars? Not a chance. But when she accidentally reveals a talent for engineering at school, she’s basically forced into joining the robotics club. Even worse? All the boys ignore Bel—and Neelam, the only other girl on the team, doesn’t seem to like her either.

Enter Mateo Luna, captain of the club, who recognizes Bel as a potential asset—until they start butting heads. Bel doesn’t care about Nationals, while Teo cares too much. But as the nights of after-school work grow longer and longer, Bel and Teo realize they’ve made more than just a combat-ready robot for the championship: they’ve made each other and the team better. Because girls do belong in STEM.

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Book Review: Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

Dini @ dinipandareads19 Comments

Goodreads: Clap When You Land
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Published: 05 May 2020
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

Panda Rating:

(4 pandas)

Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people…

In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal’s office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash.

Separated by distance-and Papi’s secrets-the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered. And then, when it seems like they’ve lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.

Papi’s death uncovers all the painful truths he kept hidden, and the love he divided across an ocean. And now, Yahaira and Camino are both left to grapple with what this new sister means to them, and what it will now take to keep their dreams alive.

In a dual narrative novel in verse that brims with both grief and love, award-winning and bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives.

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Book Review: Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous

Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

Goodreads: Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Published: 01 June 2021
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary, Coming-of-Age

Panda Rating:

(4 pandas)

Sunny Song’s Big Summer Goals:
1) Make Rafael Kim my boyfriend (finally!)
2) Hit 100K followers (almost there…)
3) Have the best last summer of high school ever

Not on Sunny’s list: accidentally filming a PG-13 cooking video that goes viral (#browniegate). Extremely not on her list: being shipped off to a digital detox farm camp in Iowa (IOWA??) for a whole month. She’s traded in her WiFi connection for a butter churn, and if she wants any shot at growing her social media platform this summer, she’ll need to find a way back online.

But between some unexpected friendships and an alarmingly cute farm boy, Sunny might be surprised by the connections she makes when she’s forced to disconnect.

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Goodreads Monday – Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

It’s the first Goodreads Monday of 2020, friends! This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners and it invites you to pick a book from your TBR and explain why you want to read it. Easy enough, right? Feel free to join in if you want to! I’ll be using a random number generator to pick my books from my insanely long GR Want-to-read list.

This week’s book is Tweet Cute by Emma Lord. The hype is super real for this book! I think I’ve already mentioned this book a few times in several posts so y’all know how excited I am to read this contemporary YA romance. It has a 4.12 star average with 3.4k+ ratings and 1.4k+ reviews.

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