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aroaessidhe · 2 months

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2024 reads / storygraph

Stuck In Her Head

short contemporary YA coming-of-age set in Hong Kong, following two teen girls who are friends

one is a musical prodigy but has lost her passion and wants to explore different possibilities for her future

the other is passionate about music but dealing with mental health & family issues

the latter develops a crush on the former, who is aroace, and they have to re-navigate their friendship, while working on a music/coding competition project together and dealing with their own issues

#aroaessidhe 2024 reads #stuck in her head #Hm this had a lot of aspects I found interesting but didn’t quite live up to what I wanted it to be #I definitely love reading YA set not in the west - this is set in Hong Kong - and I liked that a lot!#And of course we always need more YA about friendships rather than being romance focused (though this has an unrequited aspect of that)#This is written by 17yos which is cool! though it does show in the prose a bit. There’s a lot of ‘the girl’ ‘the teen’ instead of their nam #Or like informing the reader of info in slightly awkward ways - one visits the other’s house and says “is this the first time I’ve been to #- I feel like there are better ways to tell the reader this. Like that’s not something you wouldn’t be sure about right?#This made it feel like their friendship was quite tentative - school friends who’ve known each other for years but only really #started hanging out properly recently - but the text says they’ve been inseparable for years.#It definitely tackles a lot of things from burnout and perfectionism; losing passion for your talents; parents divorcing; depression #I just think some could have been handled with a bit more depth/nuance; with more space and introspection given to them #especially their main conflict about one having a crush on the aroace and then she pretends to reciprocate bc the other is suicidal and the #the other finds out and gets mad and it's......weirdly drawn out but also barely explored in depth also? idk #definitely anticipated it to be a bit like this because it's written by such young authors it's expected that they're still perfecting thei #I think teens who prefer shorter books & are looking for this sort of thing would still enjoy it for sure. I'll def look out for future boo #bisexual books #aroace books

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