Starred Review ALA Booklist (Wed Jul 06 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

Starred Review The summer before senior year holds the promise of romance for Annalie Flanagan. She takes a job at an ice-cream shop frequented by Thom, her secret crush, who is definitely flirting with her. But when someone spray-paints a racial slur on the garage of the house where she lives with her mother, her focus shifts. She calls her sister, Margaret, a high-powered university student, who quits her summer internship in New York and comes home to their midwestern town. Taking charge and sometimes offending her sister and their mother by taking steps without consulting them, Margaret is relentless in pursuit of the offenders. Her vulnerable side comes into play, though, when she resumes a relationship with her former boyfriend. Margaret physically resembles their Chinese mother, while Annalie looks more like their white father, who left years ago. Alternating as narrators, Annalie and Margaret tell their involving, interlocking stories, while speaking eloquently for others who face similar issues. While Tian doesn't shy away from dealing with large and small acts of racial prejudice and their repercussions within this family, the story revolves around the two very different sisters: their personalities, their perceptions, and their evolving connections with each other, their mother, and their friends. An impressive first novel.

Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

When their home is targeted in a racist attack, two sisters must deal with the aftermath and consequences.Nineteen-year-old Margaret and 17-year-old Annalie Flanagan both grew up in the same Illinois town, raised by their Chinese mother after their Irish American father left when they were young. Despite these shared experiences, it often seems like they couldn't be more different. While Annalie wants to blend in and keep her head down, Margaret keeps finding new causes to champion and new wrongs to right. People constantly comment on how they don't look alike, as Margaret appears more Asian. When Margaret leaves for college in New York City, Annalie finally has the chance to live outside her sister's shadow, until a racist incident brings Margaret back to town. As the sisters grapple with what it means to be mixed race and Asian American in a largely White Midwestern town, when to speak up, and whose expectations they should meet, they also struggle to navigate their relationship with each other and the ways in which they are different-and similar. About much more than just racism toward Chinese Americans, this novel deftly tackles the precarious moments surrounding the end of high school and the beginning of college, when romantic and familial relationships are complicated, changing, and all-consuming.Quiet yet powerful, complex, and grounded in the reality that nothing will ever be completely resolved. (Fiction. 14-adult)

Horn Book (Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

In this moving debut novel (set before the COVID-19 pandemic), a racist act of vandalism almost splits two biracial (Chinese American and Irish American) sisters apart as they take different approaches to handling the aftermath. The Flanagan girls are polar opposites: Annalie, seventeen, is quiet, sweet, and self-conscious while college student Margaret, nineteen, is bold and outspoken. When someone paints a slur on the garage of their small-town Illinois home, Annalie and their mother, an immigrant, want to stay silent, while Margaret digs for clues and notifies the press. Further conflict arises when Annalie realizes that her new boyfriend, Thom, may be connected to the incident. Tian crafts a realistic, nuanced coming-of-age tale that deals with questions of identity and self-doubt, internalized racism, sibling rivalry, young love, and microaggressions. The book is a good companion read for other contemporary teen novels that deal with anti-Asian hate, including Ho's The Silence That Binds Us (rev. 7/22).

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

When their home is targeted in a racist attack, two sisters must deal with the aftermath and consequences.Nineteen-year-old Margaret and 17-year-old Annalie Flanagan both grew up in the same Illinois town, raised by their Chinese mother after their Irish American father left when they were young. Despite these shared experiences, it often seems like they couldn't be more different. While Annalie wants to blend in and keep her head down, Margaret keeps finding new causes to champion and new wrongs to right. People constantly comment on how they don't look alike, as Margaret appears more Asian. When Margaret leaves for college in New York City, Annalie finally has the chance to live outside her sister's shadow, until a racist incident brings Margaret back to town. As the sisters grapple with what it means to be mixed race and Asian American in a largely White Midwestern town, when to speak up, and whose expectations they should meet, they also struggle to navigate their relationship with each other and the ways in which they are different-and similar. About much more than just racism toward Chinese Americans, this novel deftly tackles the precarious moments surrounding the end of high school and the beginning of college, when romantic and familial relationships are complicated, changing, and all-consuming.Quiet yet powerful, complex, and grounded in the reality that nothing will ever be completely resolved. (Fiction. 14-adult)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Tian’s tender debut centers the estranged, stormy, evolving sisterhood of Annalie and Margaret Flanagan following a racist incident. The Flanagan siblings are nothing alike: 17-year-old white-passing Annalie is a sweet, insecure people-pleasing high school student; 19-year-old Margaret, who resembles their Chinese immigrant mother, is an assertive aspiring lawyer in N.Y.C. Raised by Mama after their white father abandoned them years ago, the sisters’ already tense relationship worsens when their family home is vandalized with a racial slur, prompting Margaret to leave her internship in the city and return to Illinois. The sisters disagree on how to move forward. Annalie wants to respect Mama’s wishes and wait for the event to blow over. Margaret, angry at the family’s seeming indifference, begins her own investigation, much to the discomfort of their predominantly white hometown. Their summer spirals as the sisters’ resentment boils over, and when footage of the crime is found, Annalie is torn between seeking reparations and maintaining their town’s relative, if precarious, peace. Tian simultaneously addresses racism’s lasting effects on individual lives while eloquently tackling the uncertainty that teens can face in transitional periods. Told in alternating perspectives, this emotionally layered novel, populated by nuanced characters and culminating in complex resolutions, resonates. Ages 13–up. Agent: Wendy Gu, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (June)