this is a very emotional book but i think it did what it set out to do, and it did it well. i appreciated reading about a neurodivergent mc that can't control her anger well, like me. it was nice.

[1] a well written sibling relationship [2] an intriguing mystery that didn't have a cheap ending [3] characters & plots that dissuade black and white thinking (complicated characters, good people doing/saying 'bad' things, looking at all perspectives, seeing why people felt a certain way etc), that autistic people (me me me) can struggle with a lot. i really appreciated that, especially in a book for children. [4] this is a book where everything means something, from places the characters go, to things they notice when they're travelling, it's nice to see a mg book that doesn't oversimplify it's mysteries and doesn't treat kids like they're dumb : ) [5] just a positive book for neurodivergent people. the main character is flawed, she struggles, she screams, she throws things, she has meltdowns, but she also learns. she keeps learning, and she slowly makes progress, even if it's not fun.

this entire book made me extremely uncomfortable. it had so many negative stereotypes, it was very unbelievable, the plot felt lost & not in a way that felt purposeful, the author brought up so many important issues and didn't discuss any of them and to top it all off every sentence was it's own paragraph.

i'm not continuing this review because thinking about this book pisses me off

copies of my thoughts from my reading updates 'the way this book treats everyone is making me uncomfortable. there's been weird weight comments, calling a non-white teenager 'exotic-looking' and in a large portion of the chapters we're following the adult counsellor who thinks the kids are weird, stupid and were 'dropped as babies' he also puts NO effort into his job which makes my heart break for these kids (but the author has yet to discuss that). and of course he's overweight and unhygienic, because this book loves negative stereotypes so far.'

still extremely uncomfortable. currently going through several scenes of a fully grown man and a teenage boy sat on a sofa together talking about how hot the women on the tv are (they're described as 'searching through channels' to find more and stop at a channel showing womens volleyball). the 'quiet, reserved' asian woman has ended up 'fixing' the main male adults life by deep cleaning his entire apartment for him while he does nothing, buying him new furniture and washing his underwear wall. i'm not sure if the author was trying to imply that he suffers from depression, because nothing except possible alcoholism conveys that to me, also the alcoholism is only used as a punchline and has yet to be discussed in any meaningful way. the children in this book are also constantly in extremely unsafe situations that very clearly leaves them open to harm, but no adults care, which is probably the realest part of this book. what am i reading? free me

[+] this book shared some very important information about a lot of topics, especially the treatment of asian people in america at the time of the coronavirus outbreak (and consequent pandemic). it also lightly touched on how those deep in poverty weren't protected during said outbreak & how others abused that. [+] the sibling relationships were beautifully written, it was honestly the best part of this story for me. [+] in the author's note kelly yang shared that this book was inspired by her own move (with her children) from hong kong in 2020 and that added a lot of depth to the story.

[1] the dialogue felt stilted quite often and it really pulled me out of the narrative. [2] i had to suspend my disbelief quite a lot, which isn't out of the norm for middle grade but it really felt out of place here. [3] the pacing was quite odd, which again, isn't out of the norm for the age range but as someone who reads a lot of middle grade it felt very pronounced here. it really didn't let me flow with the story, i usually felt like i was trying to catch up. [4] as mentioned before, there were a lot of important topics brought up, but i wish some of them were given more page time or just not brought up (not out of a lack of importance, just to help with the pacing issues) as it felt odd to be jumping from topic to topic with no discussion surrounding it!

the first part of this book was absolutely the strongest to me and taught me quite a bit about the relationship between hong kong, china and it's residents/governments. the second and third parts were filled with the issues mentioned above, but this definitely isn't a bad book.