This Place is Still Beautiful

 By: Xixi Tian

Location: FIC TIA

Genre: Realistic Fiction, Young Adult, Romance, Sisters

COVER LOVE!!

"Tian excavates the awkward, ugly truths we avoid, and exposes them with raw emotional honesty and grace. This book made me feel seen in a way that very few books ever have. I found myself nodding and saying, 'Yes, that's so true!' over and over again." -- Misa Sugiura, author of This Time Will Be Different

With five starred reviews, this is an acclaimed novel about sisterhood, family, and the pernicious legacy of racism. Perfect for fans of Tahereh Mafi, Jandy Nelson, and Emily X.R. Pan, with crossover appeal for readers of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half. The Flanagan sisters are as different as they come. Seventeen-year-old Annalie is bubbly, sweet, and self-conscious, whereas nineteen-year-old Margaret is sharp and assertive. Margaret looks just like their mother, while Annalie passes for white and looks like the father who abandoned them years ago, leaving their Chinese immigrant mama to raise the girls alone in their small, predominantly white Midwestern town. When their house is vandalized with a shocking racial slur, Margaret rushes home from her summer internship in New York City. She expects outrage. Instead, her sister and mother would rather move on. Especially once Margaret’s own investigation begins to make members of their community uncomfortable. For Annalie, this was meant to be a summer of new possibilities, and she resents her sister’s sudden presence and insistence on drawing negative attention to their family. Meanwhile Margaret is infuriated with Annalie’s passive acceptance of what happened. For Margaret, the summer couldn’t possibly get worse, until she crosses paths with someone she swore she’d never see her first love, Rajiv Agarwal. As the sisters navigate this unexpected summer, an explosive secret threatens to break apart their relationship, once and for all. This Place Is Still Beautiful is a luminous, captivating story about identity, sisterhood, and how our hometowns are inextricably a part of who we are, even when we outgrow them.

Review by Jessica

for such a heavy and serious topic, this is one of the prettiest debuts ive read in a while. XTs writing is so, so lovely.

while the focus of the story is how a family handles a horrible act of hatred, i found the complicated relationship between the two sisters the most compelling aspect of the book. i could understand margarets need to escape her hometown and i also could empathise with annalises desire to defuse conflict by just going along with things. there are parts of each sister that i could relate to, so i really was hoping to see them work through their differences.

overall, i found the character relationships to be a great tool for discussing and analysing a topic that is so painfully relevant in todays society. and im so excited to see what XT writes next!