After years of not making much progress, Taiwanese-American Ingrid is desperate to finish her PhD on the celebrated poet Xiao-Wen Chou but struggling to find a thesis topic - when she comes across a strange note in the archives, she thinks she might have found her way forward…

This should have been a slam-dunk for me - racism and privilege within academia, the broader structures of academia, the complexities of identity and heritage, imposter syndrome, and so much more, plus an MC going through an existential crisis in the middle of her PhD… But I just could not get on with the writing.

It felt like I was reading a snappy rom-com film, and while I have a soft spot for watching such films (and actually, I can imagine this adapted into an TV series which I would probably enjoy), it’s really not what I want from a book - in written form, it’s a style that I quickly find grating and the humour doesn’t land for me. After about 100 pages, I realised that I couldn’t face a further 300 pages, and so it was a DNF (regretfully, because I really wanted to love it).

An astute story which explores the Asian-American experience in academia and more broadly, but written in a style and humour that absolutely did not work for me.