This was... fine? It felt unevenly paced so i didn't really know what i was getting, and it took too long to get me to like people (oh millennial fiction why are you so obsessed with antiheroes?), but the story pulled me along, and i read it quickly and easily. But i almost immediately forgot it. A true three-star book! Nothing to hate, nothing to love.

At first glance, Audrey Zhou, attractive twenty-something Chinese-American protagonist of Delia Caiʻs _Central Places_ seems to have it all. The valedictorian of her high school, she escaped her provincial, mostly white Midwestern town of Hickory Grove, acquiring a degree from the prestigious University of Chicago, before moving to fast-paced New York, where she works in the publishing industry. She has also become recently engaged to her long-standing talented photojournalist boyfriend, Ben Stears. Handsome, kind, and from an affluent, educated white family, the child of two Columbia University professors, he is wonderfully solicitous of Audrey, thoughtfully anticipating her needs, and the couple have started to look for a house of their own, financed, in part, by Benʻs generous parents.
However, even as the novel opens, readers already detect something amiss in proverbial paradise. Audrey and Ben are on a flight to Hickory Grove for Christmas, at Benʻs suggestion, so he can finally meet Audreyʻs parents, who heʻs never met or talked to, despite the fact that Audrey and he have been together for a while, and the couple can announce their engagement. Yet, Audrey expresses trepidation, and for good reason, because as the novel unfolds, we find that she has been cagey, and less than forthcoming about disclosing any information about her family and her Hickory Grove past. Truth be told, she has kept her fiance, Ben, almost completely in the dark. In fact, she has ditched past connections altogether, becoming estranged from her parents and alienating her best friend Kristen, first by publicly snubbing her back in their college days, then as the final nail in the coffin, deciding not to attend Kristenʻs wedding because sheʻs too busy with work. Most importantly, Audrey still carries the proverbial torch for Kyle, her unrequited high school crush, and reminisces about what couldʻve been. On top of these aforementioned tensions, things start accelerating quickly when Ben and Audrey arrive in Hickory Grove, and not only must Audrey deal with dysfunctional family dynamics, but she finds that her dad has been diagnosed with cancer, and if this werenʻt enough, of course, by coincidence, she happens to run into Kyle, Audreyʻs old flame, and later, Kristen, who is also home for the holidays. Adding to the fracas, Ben gets a call about some fires in California, so must abandon whatʻs already a dysfunctional “vacation,” because of work.
Cai does a nice job with realistic characterization, humor, and dialogue, and the novel unfolds with good pacing. Ironically, the one thing that prevented me from truly enjoying this novel is its unlikeable protagonist, Audrey. Sure, humans are flawed, but the egocentric Audrey really doesnʻt invite empathy. She exhibits annoying and consistent cluelessness when it comes to herself, is superficial in her relationships, treats loved ones insensitively and callously, and lacks the intestinal fortitude to recognize, much less tackle the cause of her insecurities and concealed unhappiness. I actually ended up feeling really sorry for Ben, Audreyʻs fiance, for having to put up with her shenanigans. In other words, Audreyʻs a hot mess and a terrible communicator, and unfortunately, at the conclusion of the novel, she really hasnʻt matured much, nor gained insight. When the novel ends, rather than feeling hopeful that Audrey has finally begun to show agency and begun adulting, repairing old wounds and forging stronger bonds with her family and friends, one has the eerie feeling that sheʻll continue repeating her same ineffective relationship patterns. In sum, a recommended, if imperfect, read.

Central Places by Delia Cai is based in a central place. Both geographically and emotionally. I could feel myself transported to my sister’s house in the Midwest while turning these pages and I could practically hear my teenage soundtrack (I once went to my sister’s in Wisconsin, came home, and uploaded a folder called “Midwestern Dirt” on Facebook inspired by the band Dear and the Headlights) through all the band references. I felt like I was in high school with Audrey as she recounted some of the memories being home evoked.

Hilarious and heartstring grabbing (still laughing at “go see Whacked” as I write this). What a great story of being slapped in the face with all the emotions we try to avoid, only to realize that those things we were running away from can have answers we didn’t even know we were looking for.

Highly recommend if you’re looking for a fun and emotional read.

*This book was received as an Advanced Readers Copy from Netgalley.

Thank you so much for allowing me to read and review your titles. I really not the opportunity!

I do appreciate it and continue to review books that I get the chance to read.
Thanks again!

First, I want to say hats off to Delia Cai for a great first novel. Thank you NetGalley and Random House for this eARC!

When I first read the synopsis for this book, I immediately thought of those cliche holiday movies where a big city woman returns to her hometown with her stuffy, rich fiancé only to come across her high school crush! Hijinks obviously ensue. But unlike those movies, this book was raw and real. You can almost immediately sense the tension that represents why she hasn’t been home in 8 years, and the first few chapters of the book thrum with anticipation for something, anything to be revealed. And that’s the beauty of this novel for me. Cai does a great job of slowly revealing layers and layers of information, and I truly enjoyed watching Audrey become a fuller picture. While the initial pacing was a bit slow for me, once the books picks up, it’s easier to stay engaged.

I feel for Audrey. Not because she’s terribly sympathetic. I rarely found myself rooting for her because she sometimes made it impossible to do so; she’s a complainer, avoidant, and 70% of the problems in the book are all her fault. But I feel for her because of how vulnerable her misery is and how relatable it is to want to run away from a life you never felt fit properly. I spent the book watching her negotiate what it means to achieve your dream™️ and envision you’ve finally found your escape, only to place said dream under the microscope, see the fraying edges, and know that the source of the unraveling is all the things you considered best left forgotten.

So at the end of the day, this wasn’t a neat, Hallmark esque holiday story. It was better; it was messy, satisfying, heartbreaking, and oh so human. It is definitely worth the read.

Note: This eARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The book will be available for everyone January 31, 2023

Thank you to #NetGalley for letting me read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed reading about Audrey, who takes her white fiancè, Ben, home to suburban Illinois to meet her Chinese immigrant parents for the first time and is forced to reconcile her past and present selves. At home, she has to grapple not only with her parents (especially her domineering, perpetually disappointed mother) and a life she left behind, but with lingering feelings for her high school crush, Kyle. She sees the way that her relationship with Ben has defined her, and has to figure out if that’s the version of herself that fits best. She also begins to see her parents as human, beyond their parenthood. The writing was clear, vivid and poignant, and I’ll remember the Zhous for a long time.

I couldn't stop reading this book once I started. I'm not even sure how to counteract reviews that found it slow since I did not get anything done on my to do list on the day I read this book almost straight through. I did not want to be interrupted, and it has been a long time since I have felt that way about a book. Sure, characters and their relationships made me throw up my hands at times, but the story seemed so real. It's so easy to look at characters and think, "I wouldn't have done that. I would have done that so much better...etc", but, if we're honest with ourselves, we make some of the same stupid mistakes. There really wouldn't be any interesting stories if everyone was perfectly able to communicate with one another.

Also, something Cai is able to do is slip in those moments when you think all is well, and then, "ohhhh, yeah, that person doesn't even realize how he (or she) is coming across". In other words, there are some thought provoking scenes and situations in here.

One part of me wants a sequel and another part of me thinks that would ruin the brilliance of Cai's ending. This is not a run-of-the-mill ending. I like the cover; I'm not so crazy about the title of the book.

I think this would make a great Book of the Month club selection or a book subscription selection. It's due for publication Jan, 30, 2023. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for this ARC.

Audrey Zhou has a problem. She hasn't been home to Illinois in 8 years and now she's returning with her fiance. to meet her parents. Actually she has two problems. She cut off her high school friends and remade herself. She's understandably on edge about the visit, and her thoughts spill out in rapidfire prose.
Will Audrey succeed in blocking her feelings to the point of numbness or will she face her pentup anger about never fitting in as she grew up Asian American 200 miles from Chicago? How can she reconcile her past with her present?
Delia Cai give strong voice to the anxiety of adulthood and the struggle between individuality and family. She calls attention to the micro and macro aggressions inflicted on her and the handful of minorities represented in her childhood community and on the job in NYC.

At 28 years of age, Audrey Zhou is finally returning to her quiet hometown of Hickory Grove, Illinois for the first time since leaving home for college. And it's not entirely by her own will; her newest engagement to her fiancé Ben forces them to leave their familiar world of New York City, and means that Audrey has to return to a place that she thought she'd already escaped. When Aubrey arrives, she's immediately confronted with memories of her past - her demanding, never satisfied mother; her demure father who needs to undergo an endoscopy; her childhood friend and secret crush, Kyle; and her then-best-friend who she hasn't spoken to in years, Kristen.

Told from Aubrey's first person perspective, we watch as her current life as a successful professional in NYC clashes with her past life, despite her best attempts to keep the two apart. She struggles to reconcile with her former childhood friends and classmates, to come to terms with her immigrant parents, and to realize the truth about herself - both in the past and in the present.

Speaking purely from a personal perspective, this book hit home for me in a lot of places. The complicated relationship I had with my own immigrant Asian parents, the pressure to do well and leave your hometown, living and working NYC as a young professional, navigating the complicated world of dating and friendships as an adult - these were all themes and struggles that Audrey experiences and describes, oftentimes in very subtle and nuanced ways. Her desire to adopt a brand new identity and abandon the person who she was before (and all the mistakes she made as a child or teen) drives a lot of her present behavior and motivations, which is also a feeling I can empathize with. Aubrey also has to come to terms with the fact that the people who know her in the present may not accept who she was (and still is) - and that underlying conflict is what drives the bulk of the novel.

On the other hand, I can understand that this book is not for everyone. Cai has written about some very specific, nuanced situations and characters and the novel is very character-driven versus plot-driven; not that much actually happens throughout the novel. The pacing can feel slow at times, and the jumps across time periods can also be frustrating and difficult to follow. I personally feel like this novel would have been more impactful if written from a third person perspective, or even across alternating perspectives as Aubrey's mother stays a fairly one-dimensional and negative until the final few pages of the novel.

For a debut novel, I think Cai has written a nuanced, character-driven story that clearly pulls from many of her own personal experiences, and will be appreciated by others who have had a similar upbringing.

Central Places is about Audrey Zhou who grew up in a small town in Illinois with her Chinese immigrant parents. Eight years after leaving her hometown for college, and cutting ties with her friends, she returns with her white fiancé to introduce him to her parents. Audrey is busy and successful in New York City where she has reinvented herself with her seemingly worldly and woke fiancé. We quickly learn that Audrey associates her hometown with more bad memories than good ones. As the book goes on, we get snippets of her past high school days mixed in with the present events of her trip home for the holidays. I liked the author’s commentary on snobbery between people who live in cities and people who live in small towns; Interestingly enough, Audrey acts as much of a snob as her fiancé does at times. Furthermore, I appreciated the way the author explored certain micro-aggressions that Audrey and her family faced living in a very white small town.

I like books with complex family dynamics, and I think this one explored Audrey’s strained relationship with her mother fairly well using writing that seemed honest and vulnerable. As a half Asian woman (my mother is Chinese), I can relate to the pressures Audrey felt and the way lack of communication can negatively impact a mother-daughter relationship. However, I do feel that the author wrote Audrey as a character who too easily blamed her parents for everything that was difficult in her life - Parents are easy targets, and Audrey was immature in that regard. This book was tedious to read at times because of excessive information: There’s a difference between filling in the blanks with Audrey’s reasons for staying away from her hometown for and repeating events in an internal dialogue.

While this book seems plot-driven at first, it reads more like a coming-of-age story and character study about a woman in her mid-twenties. Overall, I enjoyed elements of this smart book and the themes that it explored: personal growth, navigating lost friendships, and mending strained family bonds.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for this arc in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Not a big fan of this book. Well written, but the protagonist was too annoyingly unlikable. The part I enjoyed was the interplay between her and her immigrant parents.

I have mixed feelings about this book. As a child of immigrant parents I was intrigued by the story and I found some of the issues Audrey had with her parents were relatable. The characters were very well developed even though they were disappointing at times. The flaw for me was the experiences she had with her childhood friends when she returned home. Her idyllic new life falls apart as a result. But those expectations they all had for each other just seemed so unrealistic. Also the ending seems a bit contrived, how 28 years of angst with her mother suddenly changes. Thank you to NETGALLEY for the ARC.

I loved reading this one! Delia Cai is a wonderful writer. Looking forward to her books in the future.

This was a good read. It told a story of a woman who felt alone and unaccepted by her mother and how she realized as an adult returning home how her mother just wanted the best for her. Growing up she felt like an outsider but as an adult she learned what her peers thought. It was kind of like a "coming into her own" story.

3.5 stars <3
this book isn’t something i would usually enjoy, but it actually really surprised me. i really like the book cover, name, and also just everything about it. this is one of the books where the main character can get a little unlikeable and nothing really crazy happens (more of a slice of life?). it was really interesting seeing the exploration of the different themes the author tackled and, as someone who lives in a small town, seeing the main character’s experiences with that. i do, personally, think the ending “resolution” with her mother was a little too rushed. i feel like there wasn’t a slow progression over time
of their relationship improving and there being a better form of understanding between them. instead, it happened within the last few chapters.
thank you to netgalley and ballantine books for the eARC !!

I don't know if I am the target audience for this rendering of You Can't Go Home Again. Or maybe you can since you misread the signs the first time. There was a good start, if a bit slow, but this account of a successful woman in her 20's taking her fiance to her hometown was, for me, predictable despite how it wrapped up.

What a wonderful book Central Places is. Couldn't put it down. Delia Cai is an awesome writer and I hope she will write another book in the not too distant future. She brought all the characters to life. Thank you Random House and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this most enjoyable book.

You can never go home again, but you can read this book and get hit by a million darts of nostalgia and painful adult realizations that maybe you are part of the problem, after all. Delia Cai gets people, and she gets the tiny moments.

I've seen this marketed to people who enjoyed Crying in H-Mart, and I 100% agree. I can't speak personally to the experience of growing up as the child of immigrants, but I saw a lot of similarities between the two books, especially in Audrey's relationship with her mom and her experiences being one of the only non-white kids in a small rural town. (And we all know a guy like Ben...)

I love how self-aware Audrey is. It almost felt like deja vu reading this book - it's hard to explain, but I've never felt so in someone's head. Even when she's making bad decisions or saying things you already knows she's going to regret, you're rooting for her (and thinking you'd probably make the same decision). The side characters are great, too - as Audrey's manicured New York life spirals out of control, she's forced to stop romanticizing the past and face the consequences of her decisions.

The plot is subtle and realistic - there's no dramatic confessions, no sweeping romance, and I'll admit a couple times I wasn't sure where the story was headed. This is not an action-packed thriller. But the more I think and write about it, the more I want to bump this up from my initial 4 stars to 5.

TLDR; Delia Cai is a master at slapping you in the face with real life and then handing you an ice pack. Would recommend to anyone who's scared to go home, scared of becoming their parents, or just scared of getting older and realizing it's time to bin that 5-year plan.

**Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review**

As I ruminate over the story of Audrey Zhou, I am not certain if I liked it or not. Over an eight year period away from her parents and the small town she grew up in, Audrey returns with her fiance, Ben. She has cultivated a persona in New York far removed from the past. Her strong capable persona implodes as she sees the friends and family she left behind. Ben is mostly clueless about her relationship with her parents as Audrey has not chosen to share about them. Her mother is wrapped in disappointment with Audrey and never fails to voice it. Her father is quiet and resigned.
It is a story of history returning, lost relationships, and mistakes. I cannot say I enjoyed the story. It was interesting.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Central Places
Delia Cai

Sometimes a book sounds so good and then you read it and you wonder what happen to that book I read about in the summary. Throat was Central Places.

I wasn’t let down so to speak but also wasn’t blown away. I found our protagonist Audrey Zhou to be extremely selfish and unappreciative of all that she was given, especially towards her mother. Who genuinely seemed like she held her daughter to great expectations.

I found that the plot was just blah blah blah. Also wanted to note that the whole returning to my hometown after leaving because I’m better then it but still having this idiocy crush on the jock was the downfall.

I really didn’t grasp that whole scenario. I don’t know essentially it’s a novel about wanting more out of your life then realizing the life you gave it up for was just a perfect. But Audrey made it impossible to enjoy the journey.