Can’t Wait Wednesday: Our Wayward Fate

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about that we have yet to read. Generally they’re books that have yet to be released. It’s based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao

Seventeen-year-old Ali Chu knows that as the only Asian person at her school in middle-of-nowhere Indiana, she must be bland as white toast to survive. This means swapping her congee lunch for PB&Js, ignoring the clueless racism from her classmates and teachers, and keeping her mouth shut when people wrongly call her Allie instead of her actual name, pronounced Āh-lěe, after the mountain in Taiwan.

Her autopilot existence is disrupted when she finds out that Chase Yu, the new kid in school, is also Taiwanese. Despite some initial resistance due to the “they belong together” whispers, Ali and Chase soon spark a chemistry rooted in competitive martial arts, joking in two languages, and, most importantly, pushing back against the discrimination they face.

But when Ali’s mom finds out about the relationship, she forces Ali to end it. As Ali covertly digs into the why behind her mother’s disapproval, she uncovers secrets about her family and Chase that force her to question everything she thought she knew about life, love, and her unknowable future.

Snippets of a love story from nineteenth-century China (a retelling of the Chinese folktale The Butterfly Lovers) are interspersed with Ali’s narrative and intertwined with her fate.

I enjoyed American Panda so much last year that I am ready for another book by her. And this book??? It sounds so so so cute like her other one. It totally makes me think that we’re going to get the cute and the feels and the EMOTIONS. I want all of them Chao feels like NOW please. And including a love story/retelling??? YES YES YES PLEASE.

✔️ THIS BOOK IS POCAHONTAS APPROVED! Pocahontas definitely knows a little something about her love being disapproved of by her parents, so she could definitely sympathize with Ali’s plight. I think she will definitely want to follow Ali’s journey. 

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What do you think? Is this on your book TBR as well? 

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