Loveboat, Taipei, Abigail Hing Wen | Book Review

This book was an unexpected surprise that was beautifully written and captured me from the very beginning. Goodreads describes it for fans of Crazy Rich Asians or Jane Austen Comedy of Manners, with a hint of La La Land.

Loveboat, Taipei, Abigail Hing Wen

Themes: Contemporary, romance, young adult

Reading Format: Paperback

Pages: 432

5 STARS

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for gifting me with an ARC of this book. 

Ever is on the brink of leaving school and starting college, where she wants to study dance but her parents are insisting on med school. Her life is going mildly well, but she definitely isn’t happy and then her parents decide to send her from Ohio to Taiwan to learn about her Asian culture and learn Mandarin. She makes a snap judgement and doesn’t want to go, but as soon as she arrives it suddenly feels like she’s in her place.

Ever is a creative brain that wants to break free and this trip allows her to do this now she isn’t under her parent’s watchful eye. I’ve never really read a book about dance before so it was interesting to learn about Ever’s passion. I found it quite refreshing that she seemed to be a different type of main character. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading about outcasts etc, but do you sometimes think that most contemporary YA’s main characters have to be unpopular outcasts? I love these types of leads because they represent the group of us that didn’t quite fit in, but also there’s never many that centre around someone who wasn’t bullied, or disliked or cast out for some reason. So I enjoyed that Ever was a different type of main character.

I felt so immersed in this book that I actually dreamt I was in the locations it mentioned one night, if that’s not good storytelling from Abigail Hing Wen then I don’t know what is! The setting felt rich and beautiful and the writing style made it all so natural and enjoyable to read about. This combined with learning about Asian culture and heritage and seeing how parenting styles differ between the characters was so interesting. This book is filled with East Asian rep which was brilliant to read about. It also looks at the relationship of these characters with their parents and some of the pressures put on them. Honestly, it opened a massive door for me to learn more about Ever’s culture.

This book deserves more hype than I’ve seen it get. I’m so glad I received an ARC to be able to read this before it’s UK release date of January 2020.