“But I am no longer that person. I can’t be. I’m smarting, and I feel raw, but at last it is all out there. At least the truth is laid between us and that is all I can give: my honesty.”

Grace Tang has done the impossible, and only in her first semester of college: she has invented an algorithm that can solve for true love. Half of campus is dating their algorithm-matched partner, and Grace herself is matched with Jamie, a cute boy she literally ran into at the beginning of the semester. There are skeptics, led by Grace’s irritable coworker, Julia, who despises the algorithm so much that she wrote a scathing op-ed about it for their university’s newspaper. Grace doesn’t mind the disbelievers, though, especially when she and Jamie officially become a couple. However, the algorithm’s success doesn’t help Grace heal from the anguish of senior year. Still mourning her mother’s passing, she heads home every weekend to keep her father company in their quiet, grief-drenched home. Somehow, she ends up spending more time with Julia, who might not be so terrible after all, with her dark eyes and comforting presence. With her world constantly shifting around her, will Grace be able to survive her freshman year of college, and also, just maybe, crack the code for true love?

Christina Li first caught my eye in the anthology Study Break: 11 Tales from Orientation to Graduation, with her short story “Begin Again,” a piece about two girls falling for each other as they work on a group project during their last semester of college. So when I heard about her YA debut, I knew I had to tune in!

I’m particularly fond of coming-of-age stories set in college, a time that can often feel lonely, disconcerting, and scary. It’s comforting to read a book where the characters face the woes of university and, despite the odds, end up okay in the end. A lot of Grace’s struggles felt so relatable: she’s stressed about making friends, worried about asking her professor for a letter of recommendation, and has to deal with the horror that is group project conflicts. It is no wonder that Grace seeks solace in her logical algorithm—after the unpredictable grief of senior year, and now the chaos of college, she wants something certain. Even though I have to admit that I was skeptical of the algorithm from the start, I couldn’t help but root for its success, especially because Jamie seemed like her perfect match! Julia does steal the spotlight when she is introduced (especially if you like brooding love interests!), and the slow(ish) burn between Grace and Julia is so fun to read. While Grace’s romantic pursuits are undeniably a key part of her growth, I think the highlight of the book is her gradual realization that she doesn’t have to pretend to be her immigrant parents’ perfect daughter anymore, because in reality, she hasn’t been that girl in a long time. In particular, Grace is troubled by memories of her late mother being incredibly homophobic to her estranged best friend, which leads to her wondering if her mother would’ve loved this newly discovered version of herself. This complex grief seemed like the hardest part of the book to write, but I think Li did a wonderful job of poignantly rendering the love Grace feels for her mother, despite it all. I couldn’t recommend True Love and Other Impossible Odds more—it is the college coming-of-age story of my dreams!

When inventing a dating app to find love... the last thing you expect is to fall for the wrong person. When college freshman Grace Tang comes up with an algorithm for her statistics class to pair students with their perfect romantic partners, it blows up and goes viral. Yet when Grace meets Julia, her prickly coworker at the library who doesn't believe in Grace's algorithm, an unlikely relationship begins to bloom. Grace is still dealing with the grief of her mother's death, worrying about her father, losing her best friend, and her own sexuality. When all Grace craves is the solid and consistency of equations and numbers, can she go off formula and find love? This story deals with healing after the loss of a loved one and opening yourself up to others. Grace is so concerned with being the perfect daughter for her family, with trying to be there to make sure her father is okay, that she loses a bit of herself in the process and closes herself off. As she grows and learns, she begins to open herself up to friendship and love again and I think it was just a really sweet college coming of age story.

*Thanks Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books | Quill Tree Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

This book is honestly one of my favorite books I have read so far this year. There is a lot of exploration of the desire to be the perfect daughter for immigrant parents, while struggling with trying to figure out if you even know who you are, all during the tumultuous time of being a freshman and college. I was pleasantly surprised by how much more depth this book had as it didn’t shy away from topics of grief, or feelings of inadequacy our main character feels. Being alongside the journey with her as she starts to not only realize she maybe isn’t exclusively into boys like she thought she was, and seeing how she starts to push her own boundaries and establish herself as a person was so cathartic. I’ve been nonstop raving about it to my friends, and I can’t wait for it to be published.

This also had a lot of elements that felt similar to Alice Oseman’s ‘Loveless’, and made me so proud of our main character for the growth she was able to have. Definitely recommend if you like queer lit, coming of age, and stories centering children of immigrant parents.

One of the things that Grace really wants to do is to be part of the Math Summer Program she wants to apply for in her college. And when a group project is her potential way to get in, she jumps in the chance to create an algorithm on who to fall in love with in her college campus. But she's learning that falling in love might not only involve the numbers in her algorithm.

From the get go. you can tell that Grace is someone who's so reserve that there might be a reason why. And from the get go we learn why from the state of her family life, academic life, friendship life, and college life.

This was such a roller coaster of emotions. And one of the things that I loved most about this book was how love was experienced, felt, and shared. It was amazing to see Grace not just navigate about falling in love, but also how she navigates the pieces in her life that she left behind.

This was such a good book about rediscovering and learning about one's self. And knowing there's so mary things to still discover. This was a really good book and quite emotional too.