Candy Bunny Reader

  Another great book by Ann Liang ! Never Thought I'd End Up Here is about Leah, a former teenage model who messed up in trying to congratulate her cousin at her wedding in broken Mandarin. Her mother thinks she can sharpen her Mandarin skills by going on an immersion trip to Shanghai sponsored by the department her aunt works in at Stanford. Also going on this trip is a guy named Cyrus--who has been Leah's number one enemy for the last several years. He was responsible for "the Incident" at Leah previous high school.  But when Leah gets to Shanghai--it ends up becoming an unforgettable trip! New friends, new places--and she gets to learn who Cyrus really is, while also confronting her past.  I love how at first this book seemed like it was going to be a silly enemies to lovers story, but it ended up being a lot deeper than thought. This book explores so many themes ranging from connecting to your roots, finding out what you really want in life, overcoming low self-e...

My second book from this author! The first book I read from her was Where the Mountain Meets the Moon , which was the very first book I did I review on this blog. Read my review on it here ! Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin is about Rendi, who has run away from home. He ends up at an inn that's located in a semi-abandoned village, and starts working there. Lots of unusual things happen at this inn and at the village as a whole. The moon is also not in the sky, and the lack of the moon makes Rendi wonder if that is what is affecting the village negatively. As the story goes on and Rendi gets to know the people at the inn more, he hears many stories based in Chinese folklore, and he begins to tell some stories himself. The folktales end up being a key to solving the mystery of the village's downfall.  This book has a similar setup to Where the Mountain Meets the Moon where our young protagonist has a mission and magical folktales are intertwined in the story. It is super c...

  Uh oh, (semi) unpopular opinion alert... This Time It's Real by Ann Liang is about Eliza Lin, who goes to an international school in Beijing. One day, an article she writes for a class assignment somehow goes viral. The article was about her relationship with her boyfriend. Only here's the thing: Eliza has never had a boyfriend. Yup, she made up the whole thing. So now she feels that has to convince the whole world she is dating someone. She chooses to fake-date the most popular boy at her school: Caz Song, who also happens to be a popular C-drama star. Eliza's viral article ends up also getting her an internship at Craneswift: a popular publishing company. Her main assignment as an intern is to write blog posts about the dates she and Caz go on. With all of this going on, Eliza isn't sure if her relationship with Caz could ever become real, especially since she has trouble getting close to people. Her mother's job requires her to travel a lot, and Eliza has neve...