Before starting this book, I totally thought the author was someone my age (just out of college), trying to create his or her legacy as a writer - starting with their own home town (and essentially mine) Cupertino. So I had pretty big expectations. I wanted it to present us in a positive, high-achieving, innovative light, and to also tackle but not over or under exaggerate the stresses and competitions and lack of worldly views or culture. I was ready to be super critical.

I was like "why are these arbitrary side character names so diverse! all my classmates were either Sarah, Jessica, Kevin, or Rahul" and I was like "people's lives here aren't this exciting, and they're more about academics, blah blah". But then I just decided to read, and enjoy this book. I was soon captured and heavily invested. The ending really got me and like my experience with other YA books, I cried a little and felt unsatisfied but I guess I could still manage to squeeze out some sort of moral of the story...

My dad also proceeded to read this book after me too (not sure how he felt though, but the fact that he went through the whole thing states something).