If You, Then Me
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
A warm and funny teen coming of age story set in Silicon Valley from Asian American author Yvonne Woon about the questions we all ask when making mistakes in life and in love, perfect for fans of Emergency Contact and When Dimple Met Rishi.
What would you ask your future self? First question: What does it feel like to kiss someone?
Xia is stuck in a lonely, boring loop. Her only escapes are Wiser, an artificial intelligence app she designed to answer questions as her future self, and a mysterious online crush she knows only as ObjectPermanence.
Until one day Xia enrolls at the Foundry, an app incubator for tech prodigies in Silicon Valley, and suddenly anything is possible. Flirting with Mast, a classmate also working on AI, leads to a date. Speaking up generates a vindictive nemesis intent on publicly humiliating her. And running into Mitzy Erst, Foundry alumna and Xia’s idol, could give Xia all the answers.
And then Xia receives a shocking message from ObjectPermanence. He is at the Foundry, too. Xia is torn between Mast and ObjectPermanence—just as Mitzy pushes her towards a shiny new future. Xia doesn’t have to ask Wiser to know: The right choice could transform her into the future self of her dreams, but the wrong one could destroy her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sixteen-year-old Xia Chan, who is Taiwanese American, is bored with life in snowy Worcester, Mass., where she interacts primarily with her busy professor mother and her only IRL friend, neighbor Gina. The programmer combats loneliness by chatting with self-made intelligence app Wiser, which "pretends to be you in the future and gives you advice," and messaging with online crush ObjectPermanence, also a programmer. Xia thrills at the idea of change when she is accepted into the Foundry, an elite Silicon Valley school/competition for tech prodigies in which 20 scholarship students compete for $1 million in seed funding. But she begins to doubt her prowess upon arrival, navigating difficult classwork and myriad aggressions that target her gender and race, until a Foundry alumna takes a keen interest in Wiser. As Xia dons a new image, and chases her dream of funding her app, her grip on what she really wants starts to slip. Even worse is having to choose between her mysterious online crush and a real-life connection she didn't expect. Though pacing drags in the middle and rushes toward the end, Woon (the Dead Beautiful series) aptly explores real obstacles that women of color face in tech through Xia's voice, detailing Silicon Valley as fast-paced, chaotic, and sometimes shallow. Ages 13–up.