“There’s no such thing as a nice rich kid.”
Told through the eyes of a Korean girl adopted into a wealthy white family, this darkly funny debut explores casual racism, privilege, and the complexities of friendship.
Derrymore Academy circa 2007 is home to teenagers who have their eyebrows shaped and their sweet sixteens tented. Their first kisses arrive around the same time as their boating licenses and they celebrate getting their braces off with Mediterranean vacations. It is here that Emery Hooper, adopted at birth into the country club set, thrives.
The one blight on her otherwise perfect life? Lilah Chang. The Chinese American student is the embarrassing epitome of every Asian stereotype Emery despises—and is inexplicably determined to become Emery’s friend.
Lilah is both astounded and hopelessly self-conscious around the casual wealth at Derrymore, where students treat laptops as disposable and weekend spending is limited only by imagination and audacity. Desperate to fit in, she’s fascinated by Emery: an Asian girl who is somehow wholly comfortable in a white world.
When Emery’s wealth isn’t enough to protect her from increasing microaggressions, Lilah and Emery develop a complicated friendship that tentatively unites them against the undercurrent of white privilege at their school. As they speed toward graduation and Ivy League applications, Lilah and Emery circle around the truth that still irrevocably separates them: With enough money, actions don’t have consequences.