Illinois Authors

A freshman at MIT, seventeen-year-old Mei Lu tries to live up to her Taiwanese parents' expectations, but no amount of tradition, obligation, or guilt prevent her from hiding several truths-- that she is a germaphobe who cannot become a doctor, she prefers dancing to biology, she decides to reconnect with her estranged older brother, and she is dating a Japanese boy. Can she find a way to be herself, before her web of lies unravels?

Seventeen-year-old Ali is simultaneously swept up in a whirlwind romance and down a rabbit hole of family secrets when another Taiwanese family moves into tiny, predominantly-white, Plainhart, Indiana.

Chloe Wang is nervous to introduce her parents to her boyfriend, because the truth is, she hasn't met him yet either. She hired him from Rent for Your 'Rents, a company specializing in providing fake boyfriends trained to impress even the most traditional Asian parents. Drew Chan's passion is art, but after his parents cut him off for dropping out of college to pursue his dreams, he became a Rent for Your 'Rents employee to keep a roof over his head. Luckily, learning protocols like "Type C parents prefer quiet, kind, zero-PDA gestures" comes naturally to him. When Chloe rents Drew, the mission is simple: convince her parents fake Drew is worthy of their approval so they'll stop pressuring her to accept a proposal from Hongbo, the wealthiest (and slimiest) young bachelor in their tight-knit Asian American community. But when Chloe starts to fall for the real Drew--who, unlike his fake persona, is definitely not 'rent-worthy--her carefully curated life begins to unravel. Can she figure out what she wants before she loses everything?--