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As a young reader in the late \u201990s, I, along with many others, came across a book series set at a now-famous magical boarding school in the English countryside. Of course, this led me to develop an ardent boarding school fantasy of my own. The idea of being immersed in a completely new world where I could \u201cfind myself\u201d was exciting. Perhaps this very fact is part of what sparked my interest in Abigail Hing Wen<\/a>\u2019s 2020 debut novel many, many years later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Loveboat, Taipei<\/em> is the story of Ever Wong, a sheltered Asian American high school grad forced by her parents to attend a summer immersion program in Taiwan before matriculating into the Honors Program in Medical Education at Northwestern. Soon after arriving at \u201cChien Tam,\u201d she quickly discovers its real reputation among its attendees as \u201dLoveboat,\u201d the ultimate, parent-free destination for rich, up-and-coming Chinese youth to enjoy the many delights of Taipei. The novel, with its gorgeous descriptions of movement and city life as well as its nuanced main cast of characters, is the ultimate boarding school story. It bubbles with glamorous escapades in the city and messy, lively romance, all of which is balanced out with a satisfying coming-of-age story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ever feels like a character that we all know at the start of the novel. She\u2019s the first-born daughter of immigrants in America, weighed down by the expectation of becoming a doctor even if she becomes faint at the sight of blood. When she feels forced by her parents to decline admission to her dream dance program at Tisch School of the Arts and to attend a completely random Chinese immersion program the summer before her medical program starts, it feels so incredibly unjust. When she arrives at Loveboat we\u2019re really rooting for her to break out of her shell. I loved seeing Ever go through her \u201cfirsts\u201d in defying the \u201cWong Family Rules,\u201d including the purchase of her first skimpy outfit, her first bump n\u2019 grind with her friends at a seedy club, her first (and probably last) snake-blood\/vodka shot, and her first delightfully chaotic love triangle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This also leads me to one of my favorite things about the novel: its complex, diverse Asian and Asian American cast and the relationship dynamics between them. Most of Ever\u2019s classmates flock to Loveboat for their own reasons, whether it be to escape their own parents\u2019 expectations, to find love, or to party hard before they go to college, and though Ever is positioned as an outsider and someone who has little experience making friends, she is very observant, kind, and brave. This helps her garner respect among her peers and makes her a good foil to the supporting characters as events in the novel unfold. Her friendship with Sophie, her roommate, is soapy and dramatic; her enemies-to-lovers arc with Rick, her long-distance childhood rival, is complicated, then sweet. I particularly appreciated the shared love of the arts and the development of mutual trust between Ever and Xavier, a mysterious and volatile heir to a multi-industry business empire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While the novel seeks to break down Asian stereotypes within these younger characters, I did find Ever\u2019s parents felt tepid in this regard. They are a looming, ever-worrying presence in the novel, and though we do get some insight on Ever\u2019s father and the sacrifices he\u2019s made in order for their family to find success in America, Ever\u2019s mother remains unreasonable and combative to the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But perhaps that\u2019s part of Ever\u2019s journey of coming into her own and the exact point of the novel\u2014that life isn\u2019t perfect, that getting accepted into your dream school doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll be able to attend right away, that giving up your dreams doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s the end, that your family isn\u2019t always going to appreciate your point of view or values, that friendships have ups and downs, and that being sent away from home over the summer isn\u2019t the end of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Who knew that rebelling at boarding school could impart so many life lessons? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Loveboat, Taipei<\/em> is available from Bookshop<\/a>, Eastwind Books<\/a>, Laguna Beach Books<\/a>, Loyalty Bookstores<\/a>, Magers & Quinn Booksellers<\/a>, and Skylight Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Frankie Martinez<\/strong> is a writer, reader, and editor from Southern California. Her prose has appeared in 3 Moon Magazine<\/em>, Poetically Magazine<\/em>, and The Winnow<\/em>. She is currently a fiction editor at Miniskirt Magazine<\/em> and has a slice of life column at The Daily Drunk Mag<\/em>. Find out more at frankiemilktea.carrd.co<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Frankie Martinez As a young reader in the late \u201990s, I, along with many others, came across a book series set at a now-famous magical boarding school in the English countryside. Of course, this led me to develop an ardent boarding school fantasy of my own. The idea of being immersed in a completely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"WB4WB4WP_MODE":"","WB4WP_PAGE_SCRIPTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_STYLES":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FONTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_HEADER":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FOOTER":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[109,12,7,141,50,33],"class_list":["post-2224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abigail-hing-wen","tag-fiction","tag-review","tag-romance","tag-taiwanese-american","tag-ya"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2224"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2397,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224\/revisions\/2397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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