An Echo in the City

 

From the Publisher:

Two star-crossed teenagers fall in love during the Hong Kong protests in this searing contemporary novel about coming-of-age in a time of change.
 
Sixteen-year-old Phoenix knows her parents have invested thousands of dollars to help her leave Hong Kong and get an elite Ivy League education. They think America means big status, big dreams, and big bank accounts. But Phoenix doesn’t want big; she just wants home. The trouble is, she doesn’t know where that is … until the Hong Kong protest movement unfolds, and she learns the city she’s come to love is in danger of disappearing.
 
Seventeen-year-old Kai sees himself as an artist, not a filial son, and certainly not a cop. But when his mother dies, he’s forced to leave Shanghai to reunite with his estranged father, a respected police officer, who’s already enrolled him in the Hong Kong police academy. Kai wants to hate his job, but instead, he finds himself craving his father’s approval. And when he accidentally swaps phones with Phoenix and discovers she’s part of a protest network, he finds a way to earn it: by infiltrating the group and reporting their plans back to the police.
 
As Kai and Phoenix join the struggle for the future of Hong Kong, a spark forms between them, pulling them together even as their two worlds try to force them apart. But when their relationship is built on secrets and deception, will they still love the person left behind when the lies fall away?

My Thoughts:

I usually post my thoughts before the publisher, but I wanted to switch it because the publisher makes a connection with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, (two star-crossed lovers. . .). So I was reading to see the connection. Was this a Hong Kong version of Westside Story where this is definitely a tragedy between historically feuding parties (Montagues and Capulets; Jets and Sharks)? Then there is the clever and equally hearbtreaking Angel and Hannah, a novel in verse by Ishle Yi Park: 

Unlike Romeo and Juliet, there is no double suicide, but there is more than death that can make this tragic, so perhaps the message here for young readers is really about the wide spaces between cultures and places. Perhaps this is about the residual effects of poverty, culture clashes and a crumbling social structure.

I think An Echo in the City is actually closer to Park's novel in verse but set in a Hong Kong where democracy is burning and China is looming like a dark cloud over the island. Kai and Phoenix are  in Hong Kong from different areas, Kai from China, Phoenix from North Carolina. So although they meet in the same cafe in Hong Kong,  their worlds are so different. Like Angel there is no double suicide, however, what makes this so relevant and superior to R&J is the very real conflict of filial piety. The two teenagers can rebel to a point, but they are also held to family expectations in a way that non Asian communities may never understand. Asian dreams are caught in the web of expectations that affect the whole family and the whole community. That is what is so tragic about this love story. The ending is both haunting and hopeful. 

Publication Information:

Author: K.X. Song

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (June 20, 2023)