Fireworks

 

My Thoughts:

If you liked Once Upon a K-Prom by Kat Cho or XOXO  by Axie Oh, you are going to devour Fireworks by Alice Lin. 

The protagonist, Lulu Li has her whole summer planned out before she and her friends go away to college, but her plans are disrupted when her neighbor, Kai, now a K-Pop star with the group Karnaval secretly comes home to "rest and recover."  Kai and Lulu were best friends but when he was whisked away in 8th grade to South Korea to become a singer and songwriter in the K-Pop factory, he has not tried to contact Lulu in four years, so their relationship is awkward and non existent.

Except that there is a neighborhood cat that plays his own version of Shakespeare's Puck, both narrator and trickster at the same time. 

What I appreciated in this romcom is that the characters are Chinese American, even if Kai or Kite is a K-Pop star. In other words, not all Asians are the same and many Asian Americans keep their food traditions alive but not their langugage.

What I am lukewarm about is that Ms. Lin inserted an LGBTQ+ main character because Lulu is bi. Now if there were a love triangle, that would be one thing, but without it, the fact that Lulu is bi just feels like a way to check off another diversity box. It does not add to the story or make it more interesting because it seems like a throwaway fact.

The mental health and extreme fan behavior are much more interesting so I like that Lin included that. Either way, read it. 

From the Publisher:

Seventeen-year-old Lulu Li has her last summer before college all planned out. But her plans go awry when she learns that Kite Xu, her old next-door neighbor and childhood friend, will be returning home from South Korea.
 
Lulu hasn’t seen Kite since eighth grade, after he left the country to pursue a career in K-pop, eventually debuting in the boy group Karnival. When Karnival announces that Kite will be taking a break from K-pop activities for mysterious reasons, the opportunity to rekindle their friendship arises.
 
Star-struck and nostalgic, Lulu tries to reconnect with Kite. As they continue to bond and reminisce over the past, Kite’s sister, Connie, warns Lulu not to get too close to her brother. The harder Lulu tries to deny her feelings, the stronger they get. But how could a K-pop star ever fall for a nobody from home? And even if he did, is there any way for their relationship to end but badly?

Publication Information:

Author: Alice Lin

Publisher: Underlined

Publication date: June 7, 2022