A Review of Our Wayward Fate
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A couple weeks ago, I was hunting for a new book at the school library. After scanning for a couple minutes, I chose a book called Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao. I chose it because the book didn’t seem too long, and sounded interesting.
Our Wayward Fate is about seventeen-year-old Ali Chu. Though her parents are from China, she lives in Indiana. She describes the town she lives in as “dry toast”. Her town is not diverse at all - in fact, according to Ali, she’s the only Asian in town. Her teachers and classmates always make racist comments about Asian people, but she never stands up for herself. That is, until Chase Yu moves there.
From the second he gets to school, people are already shipping Ali and Chase, just because they’re both Asain and would be “perfect together”. Ali shows no interest in Chase, because she doesn’t want to prove all the people at her school right. But through kung fu and nerdy puns, they grow fond of each other. It seems perfect, until Ali’s mom finds out. She strictly forbids their relationship, and Ali is determined to find out why. As she investigates, Ali finds things about her mom she never knew about, family secrets, and the real reason why she is not allowed to date Chase.
One thing I like about this book is that between chapters, the author weaves in a well-known love story from China, known as The Butterfly Lovers. I think folktale is really sweet and connects well with what happens later on in the book. The chapters are also pretty short, which I like. One thing I don’t like is that the book doesn’t communicate the passing of time very well. Like, one chapter, Ali and Chase talk for the first time, and a couple chapters later, they’re in love and holding hands in the hallway. All throughout the book, I was kind of confused how long it had been since the start. Another thought I had while reading was that it seems rushed at some points in the novel. Some scenes are thought out really well and written wonderfully, while others are just a blur.
Since I almost never read books from the romance genre, I thought it was nice that this book had elements from other genres in it too. Overall, I recommend this book because it communicates the depth of relationships through a teenager’s eyes really well. Some parts are better than others, but if you enjoy romance, give it a try!
-Arshia
It sounds like you enjoyed this book despite the problem of progression of time. It's nice that you read in a genre that you don't normally read from!
ReplyDeleteThis book sounds pretty interesting, it's cool that it blends different genres and has some good parts even though it's not perfect.
ReplyDeleteYou can learn a lot when an author adds traditional stories and history into their novels! There's a really great violin concerto called Butterfly Lovers by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang. I never knew there was a story behind it :)
ReplyDeleteNice blog post!! This is going on my list of books I want to read!
ReplyDeleteI like that you found a book you liked while branching out to a new genre. This shows that even though it is a romance book, it has other mixed genres to capture the attention of any reader.
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