XiXi Tian

Two sisters. A shocking racist incident. The summer that will change both of their lives forever.Despite having had near-identical upbringings, sisters Annalie and Margaret agree on only one thing: that they have nothing in common. Nineteen-year-old Margaret is driven, ambitious, and keenly aware of social justice issues. She couldn't wait to leave their oppressive small-town home and take flight in New York. Meanwhile sweet, popular, seventeen-year-old Annalie couldn't think of anything worse - she loves their town, and feels safe coasting along in its confines.That is, until she arrives home one day to find a gut-punching racial slur painted on their garage door.Outraged, Margaret flies home, expecting to find her family up in arms. Instead, she's amazed to hear they want to forget about it. Their mom is worried about what it might stir up, and Annalie just wants to have a 'normal' summer - which Margaret is determined to ruin, apparently.Back under each other's skins, things between Margaret and Annalie get steadily worse - and not even the distraction of first love (for Annalie), or lost love (for Margaret) can bring them together.Until finally, a crushing secret threatens to tear them apart forever.

From the acclaimed author of This Place is Still Beautiful comes an evocative, achingly romantic road trip story about grief, diasporic identities, and deep-buried secrets that haunt us, perfect for fans of Past Lives and The Farewell. Stella Chen’s life ground to a halt when her brother unexpectedly passed away a year ago. Raised together by their grandmother in the Chinese countryside before rejoining their parents in the United States, his absence destroys the connective tissue in her family. With another jarring move her senior year, from rural Illinois to unfamiliar surroundings in San Diego, she is left alone and adrift in her family’s suffocating silence and the void of unanswered questions around her brother’s death. So when Stella’s parents force her to join her estranged childhood friend Alan Zhao for a college tour all over California, Stella dreads it. Alan is a reminder of everything Stella wishes she could be — popular, gregarious, unburdened — and a reminder of how lost she is. As this road trip takes Stella and Alan down beautiful coastlines and through fraught family dynamics, Stella can’t help but feel the spark of why she and Alan were once so close. Before long, they find themselves pulled into each other’s orbits, forcing unspoken feelings and long-hidden truths into the light.