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Central Places
Central Places: A Novel | Delia Cai
4 posts | 2 read | 1 reading | 5 to read
A sensitive, sharp-eyed, slyly funny novel of venturing back into the foreign country that is your pastand discovering that you can never really shake the places and people that shaped you.Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts A young womans past and present collide when she brings her white fianc home to meet her Chinese immigrant parents in this vibrant debut from an exciting new voice in fiction. Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny central Illinois town where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fianc. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person shes become, from those she left behind. But returning to Hickory Grove is . . . complicated. Audreys relationship with her parents has been soured by years of her mothers astronomical expectations and slights. The friends shes shirked for bigger dreams have stayed behind and started families. And then theres Kyle, the easygoing stoner and her unrequited crush from high school that she finds herself drawn to again. Ben might be a perfect fit for New Audrey, but Kyle was always the only one who truly understood her growing up, and being around him again after all these years has Old Audrey bubbling up to the surface. Over the course of one disastrous week, Audreys proximity to her family and to Kyle forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward and everything she's imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?
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MartinaLove
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4/5 ⭐

This book hit a spot in my heart. I could see so much of myself in the main character. I cried a little because I could relate to some parts of her life. I wasn't expecting it. I thought it was a great book.

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MartinaLove
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Currently reading 🐝

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ImperfectCJ
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Mehso-so

I might be too old to enjoy this novel. It's not bad, just kind of sophomoric, by which I mean the narrator (and maybe the author?) feels wise and worldly to herself, but to an old lady like me, she just seems so...young. She's got such conflicted ideas of what it means to be a grown-up, and I get that this is the point, but I'm not sure it's all that interesting to me. Maybe if I had a "home town" or an affinity for New York I could connect more.

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ImperfectCJ
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I'm using a very minor procedure on my shoulder blade this morning as an excuse for a mini readathon this afternoon! My plan is to finish the tagged then start on The Bandit Queens, which I only have for one more day on a skip-the-line Libby loan. The other two are for if I need a break. Hopefully I can find a comfortable reading position that doesn't stretch anything that shouldn't be stretched or compress anything that shouldn't be compressed.🤞

ravenlee I wish you an easy recovery and a comfortable reading position! 12mo
ImperfectCJ @ravenlee Thank you! I was going to teach this afternoon, but the medical staff convinced me to get a sub, which I think was a good idea. Not too uncomfortable at this point, but I'm not sure if I could teach basic geometry well without gesturing with my left arm. Well, and I can't shower for 24 hours, which isn't optimal for anyone. 12mo
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