Private Label
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Devil Wears Prada meets Far from the Tree in #1 New York Times bestselling author Kelly Yang’s powerful love story about two teens searching for their place in the world.
Serene dreams of making couture dresses even more stunning than her mom’s, but for now she’s an intern at her mom’s fashion label. When her mom receives a sudden diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, all that changes. Serene has to take over her mother’s business overnight while trying to figure out what happened with her dad in Beijing. He left before she was born, and Serene wants to find him, even if it means going against her mom’s one request—never look back.
Lian Chen moved from China to Serene’s mostly white Southern California beach town a year ago. He doesn’t fit in at school, where kids mispronounce his name. His parents don’t care about what he wants to do—comedy—and push him toward going to MIT engineering early. Lian thinks there’s nothing to stick around for until one day he starts a Chinese Club after school . . . and Serene walks in.
Worlds apart in the high school hierarchy, Serene and Lian soon find refuge in each other, falling in love as they navigate life-changing storms.
* Junior Library Guild Selection * A Common Sense Selection *
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Southern California, Serene Li, 17, wants to be just like her successful fashion designer mother, Lily. But when Lily is diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer after a fall during New York Fashion Week, Serene finds herself in her mother's shoes much sooner than she imagined, moving from distrusted intern to second-in-command. Worried about being left on her own, Serene also quietly attempts to find her long-absent father, who is presumably still living in Beijing, but she speaks almost no Chinese. Enter Lian Chen, recent emigrant from Beijing, whose family is pressuring him to attend an engineering program at MIT. At school, he starts Chinese Club as a college application filler, thinking it will give him time to practice his true passion—comedy—but he gets more than he bargained for when Serene walks in. In astutely told alternating chapters that advance toward a hopeful end, Yang's (Parachutes) protagonists steadily find comfort in one another, working to take control of their lives while navigating stifling parental expectations, racial prejudice, and school bullying and workplace politics. Ages 14–up.
