Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen Review

Title: Loveboat, Taipei
Author: Abigail Hing Wen
Format: Audiobook

When eighteen-year-old Ever Wong’s parents send her from Ohio to Taiwan to study Mandarin for the summer, she finds herself thrust among the very over-achieving kids her parents have always wanted her to be, including Rick Woo, the Yale-bound prodigy profiled in the Chinese newspapers since they were nine—and her parents’ yardstick for her never-measuring-up life.

Unbeknownst to her parents, however, the program is actually an infamous teen meet-market nicknamed Loveboat, where the kids are more into clubbing than calligraphy and drinking snake-blood sake than touring sacred shrines.

Free for the first time, Ever sets out to break all her parents’ uber-strict rules—but how far can she go before she breaks her own heart?

When Ever Wong gets into an art school for dance in New York, she is more than excited to tell her best friend, Megan. Even though she knows it is probably not going to happen, because her controlling parents want her to go to medical school. Though there is that tingle of hope when Megan encourages her to go. That all changes when her mother tears up that hope and sends her off to Taipei for a summer program to help with her mandarin. Little do they know, the kids call it the Loveboat and this summer is going to change everything.

I got this book the day it came out, but ended up listening to it on Scribd. This is a deubt and is beautifully written. The characters were great. I felt myself getting upset right along with Ever at her parents. But overall, the best part was learning a culture that wasn't my own. This book even taught some mandarin, which was great. I did go back and look it up in the book so I could see how it looked written down.I also love that the romance of it was slow burning. It didn't just throw her into "love" from the get go. And the embarrassing situations she got herself into were fabulous!

The only thing I didn't care for about this book was the best friend, Sophie. And it isn't really anything the author did wrong. I know girls like Sophie and they just annoy me. It is great that the author was able to write her like that, but it annoys me that Ever cared about keeping her as a friend.

I gave this book 4.5/5 stars. It was entertaining and overall a great read. There was so much culture and learning with this book that made it even better. I am looking foward to the second book in this series and hopefully new books from Abigail Hing Wen.