“Too bad humanity is a force of ugly destruction.”

Reading about racism has always made my blood boil in disgust, and that’s exactly how I felt when I read The Lies We Tell. Anna Xu chose to attend Brookings University for many reasons: one of it being investigating the truth behind the murder of her former babysitter. All she wanted was to ace in her classes and perhaps retrace the mystery of the cold case. Well, trouble would come rolling when you’re sniffing too close, they say.

The story mainly mentions about racism towards Asians which I find to be really infuriating. The fear and anger that Anna feels when facing these racist remarks were realistically written, but just like in real life, there’s nothing much you can do when someone chose to be racist. If I have to be honest, the mystery element in this book is rather weak and not really surprising, as I was able to guess the real perpetrator from the-go. But it did not make it any less disgusting. To be fair, the storyline does feel realistic, like it can happen to anyone in actual reality.

I was not really sure what to feel with Anna’s character at first, because for someone who wants to be on top in her class, she focuses too much on other things. But I do like her curiosity and the way she stands up for herself in the end was very courageous of her. There was a potential enemies-to-lovers with Chris Lu, the son of her family’s rival, but it wasn’t really developed too deeply, as the “being enemies” part seems to run one-sided only. They were still cute, though I wish there were more banter going on