Book of the Day

From the review

A shared-vision romance only works if both people can admit, out loud, that they saw the same impossible thing, and Ann Liang stalls that admission for as long as she possibly can. Chanel Cao and Ares Yin have watched the same fire in their heads before they've traded ten real sentences, and neither one believes the other actually saw it too. It's a smart premise because it forces two people who would much rather perform than confess into an alliance they both resent needing. Chanel is the girl everyone at her private school wants near them, and Liang doesn't let that kind of popularity look effortless. The book keeps circling back to the machinery underneath it: the angles she's learned to hit in photos, the meals she tracks without thinking about it anymore, the smile she keeps ready for whoever's watching. Her parents have quietly separated, and she's decided the marriage is still salvageable if the house that's supposedly about to burn down stays standing and photogenic, which means she needs Ares gone, or in love with her, or both. It reads shallow until you notice what's underneath the plan: she isn't really chasing a boy. She's chasing proof that something in her life can still be fixed if she just tries hard enough.