Overview
From the acclaimed author of This Place Is Still Beautiful comes an evocative, achingly romantic road-trip story about grief, diasporic identities, and the deep-buried secrets that haunt us, perfect for fans of Past Lives and The Farewell. Stella Chen's life ground to a halt when her brother unexpectedly passed away a year ago. Raised together by their grandmother for years in the Chinese countryside before rejoining their parents in the United States, his absence destroys the connective tissue in her family. With another jarring move her senior year, from rural Illinois to unfamiliar surroundings in San Diego, she is left alone and adrift in her family's suffocating silence and the void of unanswered questions her brother left behind. So when Stella's parents force her to join her estranged childhood friend Alan Zhao for a college tour all over California, Stella dreads it. Alan is a reminder of everything Stella wishes she could be--popular, gregarious, unburdened--and a reminder of how lost she is. As this road trip takes Stella and Alan down beautiful coastlines and through fraught family dynamics, Stella can't help but feel the spark of why she and Alan were once so close. Before long, they find themselves pulled into each other's orbits, forcing unspoken feelings and long-hidden truths into the light.
Full Product Details
Author: XIXI Tian
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Imprint: Collins
Dimensions:
Width: 14.80cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 21.60cm
Weight: 0.345kg
ISBN: 9780063086074
ISBN 10: 0063086077
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 30 September 2025
Recommended Age: From 13 years
Audience:
Young adult
,
Teenage / Young adult
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
""Tian crafts an evocative story following a high school senior who must navigate the aftermath of a devastating loss and its ripple effects. Through Stella, Tian attentively considers immigrant diasporic struggles in the U.S. and finding connection while grappling with grief and guilt. Fans of Past Lives and The Farewell will resonate with this emotionally charged road trip novel."" -- Publishers Weekly
Author Information
XiXi Tian was born in China and immigrated to the United States when she was a year old. She grew up in central Illinois, graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in history, and then attended Harvard Law School. She is a writer, lawyer, avid reader, and lifelong Midwesterner no matter where she lives. Her debut novel, This Place Is Still Beautiful, was an Indies Introduce and Indie Next Pick and received five starred reviews. You can visit her online at xixiwrites.com.
