Miss Fortune Cookie

October 15, 2012
This lighthearted romp set in San Francisco's Chinatown offers a thoughtful take on cultural identity and friendship encased in a far-fetched plot. Back in eighth grade, Mei uninvited Irish-American Erin from a sleepover on the grounds that she wouldn't "fit in" with the Chinese-American girls. The pair's mutual friend Linny helped paper over the rift, but Erin still hurts. She feels Chinese inside. China was her birthplace and home for years; she loves its language, literature, food and traditional medicine--she's even dyed her hair black. She blogs her Chinese-American inner self via her alter ego, Miss Fortune Cookie, dispensing "Confucius says" advice to the perplexed. While UC Berkeley-bound Linny organizes protests against bigotry, Mei and Erin wait to hear from the Ivy League. Darren, Mei's true love, is staying in California, but Mei's hardworking single mother insists she attend Harvard; Stanford just won't do. (Not every reader will identify with the agony of choosing among top-ranked private colleges.) Fearing the couple might elope, Erin enlists Linny and handsome Weyland to dissuade them; a frantic but repetitive chase ensues. Erin's ruefully self-aware obsession over her fractured friendships rings touchingly true, but the relentless madcap hijinks and nonstop action work against depth, leaving promising subject matter unresolved. It's fun, but it could've been so much more. (glossary, pronunciation guide, author's note) (Fiction. 14 & up)

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January 1, 2013

Gr 8 Up-Erin and her best friends, Linny and Mei, live in San Francisco's Chinatown and are seniors at an elite public high school. Mei and Linny are Chinese, Erin is not. Born in China, she has grown up immersed in the culture and considers herself "Chinese on the inside." Linny is the glue that holds their friendship together, as tensions still exist between Erin and Mei from an incident years earlier. Linny and Erin plan to attend UC Berkeley, but when Erin is accepted at Harvard, she has to weigh what she wants versus what she thinks others want for her. Mei, also accepted at Harvard, would rather attend Stanford in order to be near her secret boyfriend, Darren, but her mother will have nothing but "the number one university." When Erin, who anonymously writes the advice blog Miss Fortune Cookie, answers a letter that she believes is from Mei and Mei seems to follow the advice by announcing her plan to elope with Darren, Erin is shocked. As she attempts to correct her mistake, she meets a potential new love, Weyland, and a pesky kid, Lincoln, and continues to struggle with the decision about her future. Even though the ending is happy, it feels artificial. Previous events are referred to as though readers should already be familiar with them, and characters, like Lincoln, provide humor but don't seem to really belong. Although more serious, Cara Chow's Bitter Melon (Egmont USA, 2010) is a better selection about Chinese mothers and daughters.-Kefira Phillipe, Nichols Middle School, Evanston, IL

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
Grades 9-12 Miss Fortune Cookie, the popular San Francisco advice columnist, dispenses wisdom via the popular after-dinner treat with grace, kindness, and insight. But Erin, the mousy, nerdy 17-year-old girl behind Miss Fortune, feels pretty clueless in her all-too-real life. Her best friend, Mei, can't choose between following her mother's wishes to attend Harvard and following her heart to attend Stanford with her boyfriend. Meanwhile, Erin faces her own dilemma when she is unexpectedly accepted to Harvard after she has promised her other best friend, Lin, that they'd attend Berkeley together. In this tale of growing up and apart, Bjorkman (My Invented Life, 2009) does a fine job capturing the intense pressures and disappointment students face when college-admissions time rolls around. It becomes apparent that each girl has a destiny that will physically take her far away from the others, yet their bond is solid, and readers will root for Erin and her friends to discover themselves and each other as they work toward their futures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)