Café con Lychee by Emery Lee - Book Review
6/10 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
TW: homophobia, racism, cultural appropriation, fear of being outed, toxic friendships, bullying
(TWs are ranked in order of severity, please take them seriously!)
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while! I just started senior year and everything’s been moving kinda fast, but I have gotten the chance to read a lot!
Most recently, I’ve read:
On a Sunbeam (graphic novel by Tillie Walden)
Rainbow in the Dark by Sean McGinty
Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by Jonny Garza Villa
Love from A to Z by S.K. Ali
Lobizona by Romina Garber
Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
My So-Called Bollywood Life by Nisha Sharma
I’m currently reading Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner 🍜
^me and my college applications rn😭
Summary:
“Sometimes bitter rivalries can brew something sweet.
Theo Mori wants to escape. Leaving Vermont for college means getting away from working at his parents’ Asian American café and dealing with their archrivals’ hopeless son Gabi who’s lost the soccer team more games than Theo can count.
Gabi Moreno is miserably stuck in the closet. Forced to play soccer to hide his love for dance and iced out by Theo, the only openly gay guy at school, Gabi’s only reprieve is his parents’ Puerto Rican bakery and his plans to take over after graduation.
But the town’s new fusion café changes everything. Between the Mori’s struggling shop and the Moreno’s plan to sell their bakery in the face of the competition, both boys find their dreams in jeopardy. Then Theo has an idea—sell photo-worthy food covertly at school to offset their losses. When he sprains his wrist and Gabi gets roped in to help, they realize they need to work together to save their parents’ shops but will the new feelings rising between them be enough to send their future plans up in smoke?”
Representation:
This will be an own voices review since I’m coming from an Asian American & queer perspective, but we are not a monolith and not everyone will agree with my interpretation.
To be honest, I had really high expectations for this book. It had been in my TBR ever since I heard it was coming out, and I was super excited to read about two queer PoC falling in love (not to mention the enemies to lovers and food!!) but it ended up falling short in a lot of ways.
For representation, Theo Mori is Japanese and Chinese (if I remember correctly) and Gabi Moreno is Puerto Rican. While Theo is gay and out, Gabi is very much in the closet and struggles with his father’s machismo expectations.
I will say that while this is the author’s own experience growing up in these cultures, the book’s impact depended on the readers. For white readers, the book would appear to reinforce negative stereotypes like Asian parents pushing for perfect grades, and Latinx parents being machismo and sexist.
It’s one of those things that for Asian kids, we know that sometimes our parents can be strict, but it’s not something that applies to all Asian parents. I would have liked to see some of those stereotypes challenged in this book instead of reinforced.
That being said, the book did a really good job of showing the struggles of being in the closet, especially with a homophobic family.
What I Liked:
I liked the plot and how it flowed - nothing seemed choppy or didn’t make sense. There was always a reason the characters were doing what they did, and even if you didn’t agree with it you understood their motivations.
I needed a good beach read when I picked this up, and it did not disappoint. I also love love love when romance books have switching perspectives - it adds a lot of dimension to the characters.
Why I couldn’t give it a 10:
Sadly, this book ended up falling into a lot of unfortunate stereotypes that I felt readers from other backgrounds wouldn’t recognize as such. I discussed this a bit already, but it was to the extent that I had to put the book down at times. I also didn’t really like how the “enemies to lovers” aspect was basic - they genuinely had little reason to hate each other and it was mostly one sided. This is later acknowledged so that they can have a romance, but it fell flat for me. I prefer when characters have complex motivations, especially for a plot line that propels so much of the book.
Ultimately, I’m grateful for the representation this book brings to the table and I hope it can make people feel seen, I just didn’t enjoy the writing as much as I wanted to. For a debut novel, it’s not bad!
I can’t think of any recommendations like this book at the moment (because this is a months-old draft) but I’ll keep an eye out!
Thanks for reading!
