Crossing (book review)

picture courtesy of examiner.com

I always like reading books exposing or showing different cultures such as in the case of Akata Witch or The Housekeeper & The Professor. I learn something new through the characters or even the environment they are put upon.

Crossing by Andrew Xia Fukuda does that. Written in the first person narrative, the novel is told in the voice of Xing Xu who alongside his family and friend, Naomi Lee, is a Chinese immigrant. Naomi and him are the only Chinese immigrants in a usual all-white school. And as another year begins, students start to die unexpectedly, reporting before their death a man with a red jacket. As the story progresses, Xing finds out many things of people and of himself that will amount to an interesting ending of the book.

When I read the first page, I got interested. However, as I read more I got more into the book. This book has impeccable vocabulary that it took me back to Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (and that book had so much vocabulary).

The mystery part of Crossing isn't focused on the murderer but rather the after effects that affect the main character. There is a struggle to fit in with a community that has never really seen people from a different ethnicity besides Xing and Naomi. This book got me to see more of the clash between "U.S. land of the free" and the reality of immigrants here. Fukuda did a wonderful job giving a realistic tint to a YA novel. Most YA novels deal with angst and fitting in but this novel deals in a deeper angst: one of living with a constant struggle of fitting in  that is harder to fix than a makeover. After all you can't change where you come from.

I definitely recommend this book if 1. you want to learn new words like "vociferous," "visceral" or "ephemeras"; 2. you like mysteries and ...3. you don't like perfect endings because this book did not end in a happy "perfect" ending. I can write so many more reasons as to why you should read this book but in the end: I rather you just try for the sake of another adventure on the go.


Til Next Blogpost,
Miss Bobo