Ricki's Reviews > Top Story

Book five of a series I’ve loved, but the last one I’ll read. I feel conflicted about this book. One one hand, I adore the protagonist, Mia Tang, and these books have so much heart!

On the other hand, as the series goes on, it becomes more nutritious and less delicious. The author was trying to cram way too much of her research into the novel, usually through characters giving mini history lessons to each other every few pages. There’s sooo much unrealistic dialogue, especially from the 13-year-olds.

Just as bad, there is a huge focus in this book on middle grade romance and confessing your feelings to your crush. The message is that if you’re 13 and you haven’t told your crush how you feel about them, you’re not being honest and your true self. Up until this book, I was totally rooting for Mia and Jason to get together someday and become a cute couple (as young adults in an imaginary future beyond the book). But when they got together as a couple who were still children, I felt really squirmy and couldn’t enjoy it at all.

I’ve bought the first 3 books of the series to share with my kids, but that’s as far as we’ll go with this series and author.