Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Stephanie

Half-white, half-Asian Patty Ho has never felt complete. Her white friends always joke about her crazy Taiwanese mother's ways, and Patty shuns the company of the goodie-goodie Anne Wong, the only other Asian girl at her school. But worst of all in Patty's life is her mother, who's a five-foot-tall, traditional, wary, embarrassing Mom-inator, complete with foreign accent. Mom's worst regret is marrying Patty and her older brother Abe's (oh, did we mention that beloved Abe is going to Harvard?) father, who disappeared mysteriously when Patty was 2. No one ever talks about him.

When a bellybutton fortune reading reveals that Patty will marry a white man, her mother freaks out and ships her off to math camp at Stanford along with Anne. But Palo Alto, California is a lot different than Washington State. There a millions of Asian guys (which ought to make Patty's mom happy, as she wants her daughter to marry a rich Taiwanese man). There's Stu, for example, who's hot, Chinese, AND thinks hapas are cute. And Patty is slowly beginning to learn to love being "the best of both worlds."

Of course, there's still her crazy worrywart mother to ruin her summer... but what turns out to be heartbreak and humiliation may reveal clues about her mother's past that Patty never knew.

Justina Chen Headley takes readers through every aspect of Patty's emotional understanding of herself. With plenty of self-deprecating humor and Asian references, this book accurately depicts the confusing life of a hapa, and how she learns to love herself for who she is... no lies.