Why am I passionate about this?
I’m a Jamaican and Korean American author of young adult romance, and when crafting my stories, I love to create characters who go against the expectations thrust upon them, whether they’re based on race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. As a woman, as someone with multiple ethnic identities, as someone who isn’t neurotypical, and someone who doesn’t subscribe to the norms of gender and sexuality, navigating intersectionality has been a large part of my life and, therefore, my work. Rules should be broken when they're the ones telling us we can’t do something based on who we are.
Talia's book list on characters that break all the rules
Why did Talia love this book?
This book breaks all the rules because I’m still not certain that it wasn’t a fever dream. Fan culture, particularly K-pop fan culture, is usually depicted as cute and innocent and something for teenage girls. However, Y/N really flips that on its head and delves into the dark underbelly of fandom that includes obsession, stalking, and the break in reality that can happen due to heavy reliance on parasocial relationships.
This book was so immersive in the way it flipped between fanfiction, in which you’re meant to insert yourself into, and the wild journey that the unreliable narrator goes on. I loved this book because it did so much with so few pages, and it was so beautiful on a craft level. It was deeply unhinged, grotesque, and confounding at times, but I couldn’t look away.
3 authors picked Y/N as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
"Wondrous and weird." -New York Times
"Gorgeous." -New Yorker
"High Brow x Brilliant." -NY Mag (Approval Matrix)
"So good it's hard to believe." -New York Times Book Review Podcast
"Rare." -n+1
"A true novel of the era." -Elle
"Piercing, feverish, and frequently astonishing." -Entertainment Weekly
"Utterly brilliant, shining, and mesmerizing." -Cosmopolitan
"Freakish and hallucinatory." -Vulture
"Absurdly funny." -Ms. Magazine
"Savage." -Vanity Fair
"Playful, immersive yet unreal." -Esquire
"Riveting and innovative." -TIME
"Curious, cerebral . . . with moments of tender poetry." -Times Literary Supplement
"It."-SSENSE
"Sophisticated." -Chicago Review of Books
"Strange, haunting, and undeniably beautiful." -Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"One…