Why I read it: I picked this on up from NetGalley.What it’s about: (from Goodreads) Everville, New York — it’s the town where Tiffany Cheung grew up, and the last place she wants to be. But after losing her job in Manhattan, that’s exactly where she finds herself. Worse, she’s working at her family’s Chinese diner and feeling like the outsider she once was. The only bright side is that Chris Jamieson, the boy she used to tutor, is still around. Her high school crush is hotter than ever, and he needs her help
again. Tutoring Chris’s son is the perfect temporary job. Except, Chris finally seems interested in her — and is hinting about a less temporary arrangement. Talk about bad timing! Because Tiffany’s not staying and nothing will stop her from getting back to her real life. But maybe what’s real is about to change
.
What worked for me (and what didn’t): This book generated a bit of buzz on Twitter and among my blogger friends because it has a Chinese-American heroine and race is one of the themes of the book. Sometimes (many times?) it seems to me that ethnic/biracial characters could just as well be Caucasian – by that I mean to say that often different race is not portrayed as difference. Partly, I wonder whether it is because there is a “we are all the same” idea about anti-discrimination, but I also wonder if it is authorial/editorial fear that books with characters that are “too different” won’t sell well. In fact, there have been a few posts which seem to suggest that it is the case that such books don’t sell well. I’m not sure what that says about the romance reading public.
