The Author Archives: Ann Liang

I read every Ann Liang book and I have to talk about them.

It's a bit tedious to write separate reviews about every book, especially when they have themes in common and my thoughts about her writing apply to them all. Plus, since I've read all of her books, I have thoughts that don't really fit into a single book's review. It makes sense to talk about her books overall.

I'm also currently working on self-assigned side quests to read all novels by specific authors. It's a fun way to read more from authors whose books I like instead of being swayed by hype for new releases all the time. I definitely want to talk about other authors' books too and overall book chats like this sounds better. So, I thought I'd make a series out of it!

Welcome to The Author Archives! This is a blog series born from my personal quest to read every backlist book by authors I love. In each post, I'll dive deep into an author's entire body of work from my perspective, sharing short reviews, comparisons, and my overall thoughts on their novels—all in one place.

Note: This post is written in 2025 when her latest book is Never Thought I'd End Up Here. Hopefully, I will update it with new releases in the future.

i hope this doesn't find you

I was introduced to Ann Liang in 2024 by Cups and Thoughts, a YouTuber who raved about the author's then-latest book I Hope This Doesn't Find You. After watching her reading vlog where she read, annotated, and highly praised the book, I had to pick it up myself.

The book in 3 sentences: Sadie is The Good Girl—polite, kind, smart—but she only pretends to be that way in order to succeed in life. One day her secret scathing emails that show the real her get sent to everyone. Watch her figure out who she wants to be while falling in love with the nemesis she's always been obsessed with.

I've already written a full review on I Hope This Doesn't Find You so check that out for all the details. Here, I'll touch upon the main themes that make sense in the overall picture of Ann Liang's writing.

The biggest theme is academic pressure. Sadie works hard, to the point of suppressing all her feelings in order to be the best, so that she can get a good education and job and can take of some burden from her mom's shoulders. But it's easy to tell that others aren't the cause of it, she's put the pressure on herself.

I wasn't a good academic student and I am convinced that academia was/is not the right studying system for me. But I related to Sadie because I also put pressure on myself to do well in exams and get good grades even though my parents didn't tell me anything. I felt like I had to.

Ann Liang brought out the self-placed academic pressure really well in the book. Reading about Sadie who has taken that pressure 100x and feels helpless for most of the book except about her grades was a bit painful. I won't lie, it felt a little healing to see her break the image of what she "needs" to do in order to have control. Her personality doesn't change, it's hard to change a core part of oneself, but she's in a much better place at the end and she reached there by going through a lot.

My favourite aspect of the book was the arc against the "good girl" image. Sadie works so hard to be the good girl that everyone expects—smart, responsible, helpful, polite, full of smiles. She seemed unbelievable to people to the point that someone sabotaged her by sending out her secret therapeutically written rage emails. But was it worth it? Is it even the right thing to aim for or expect?

Instead of speaking against the whole idea of a "good girl", the author instead shows how it is bad for you. Considering that the book is targeted at teenage girls and it is highly likely that teenage girls will read it, I'm glad that the book shows how being truly oneself—even if it is bossy and a bit too confident—is better than being the girl that everyone else wants you to be. There's nothing more poisonous than moulding oneself to everyone else's expectations.

The academic-rivals-to-lovers romance was done well. The majority of the book was about Sadie but there was enough focus on Julius and their romance. I really liked how they ended up pining for each other and how they complemented one another.

I read this in one sitting. Cover-to-cover. I could not stop reading it. I loved I Hope This Doesn't Find You so much that I knew I wanted to read other books by the author. However, like most readers with too many books on their to-read lists, I forgot about it for a whole while.

this time it's real

A whole YEAR later, after seeing Ann Liang books being loved by others' too, I finally decided to just binge-read all of her books. I started with This Time It's Real because it sounded a bit similar to I Hope This Doesn't Find You i.e. it's a contemporary YA story about academics and an unlikely romance.

This Time It's Real was quite similar to I Hope This Doesn't Find You in writing and vibe. I read this in one sitting as well. Not because I was invested in the story but because it was a quick and easy read. I was hooked because it was entertaining and didn't require my brain to work and wasn't much emotional. The book is ~350 pages but it's so easy to read and the story has a good flow that I didn't need a break.

The book in 3 sentences: Eliza wrote a fake essay about finding the love of her life which was so convincing that it went viral. To keep it "real", she proposes a fake-dating scheme to Caz Song. Cue romance.

At the start of the book, Eliza is struggling to fit in in Beijing and her school. She feels out of place even being Chinese because she grew up outside of the country. Caz helps her connect with her homeland and feel more confident. There isn't much character development, though. In both Eliza and Caz. Not as much as I would have liked to see.

I'd say that out of all Ann Liang's books, this has the most focus on romance. I Hope This Doesn't Find You features romance quite a bit too but the main focus is Sadie. Here, the main focus is romance. This read like a lot of other YA books, actually, which might be why I didn't enjoy it that much compared to other books. I enjoyed it while reading it but it didn't make a lasting impression.

I liked the focus on Eliza's crumbling friendship with her best friend. Eliza's family moves a lot which meant that she hasn't made many strong friends and one friend is also seemingly growing apart. Slowly losing friendships from school is almost a universal experience so that meant something. However, it didn't actually get much of an arc so I won't say that it was depicted well.

It's a testament to Ann Liang's writing that she made a book without a specific hook interesting enough that I read it in one sitting. It had a bunch of different elements but nothing stood out like in I Hope This Doesn't Find You. I wouldn't recommend this unless you have already read and liked other Ann Liang books.

a song to drown rivers

This Time It's Real may not have made a huge impact but I wasn't deterred from reading Ann Liang's backlist! Since the last contemporary choice didn't turn out to be so great, I picked up A Song to Drown Rivers which looked to be totally different from the 2 books I read so far.

A Song to Drown Rivers is Ann Liang's only historical fiction (so far). It's inspired by the ancient Chinese legend of Xi Shi, one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China. I didn't know that it was based on something before I finished the book but I was very taken by it anyway.

The book was amazing. The world building was great, the writing was beautiful, the characters were great, and the story was great. The writing made it seem like a different world and I was totally lost in it. I liked how it felt like a cautionary folktale at the end, and I loved the lesson of the story. I read this in one sitting too.

The romance in this was interesting because it didn't really happen. The just the main character pining for the love interest for pretty much the entire book and couldn't do anything about it because they're not supposed to be together. I did not get her infatuation with him (and his with her) considering how it started and how they barely knew each other, but maybe that's just me. It's historical fiction, after all. I don't think dating was a thing then?

I did not expect to root for the villain but I wished the story ended another way so hard at the end. Somehow, the author got me to love the villain too. I understood why he was the way he was and I wished that his story ended differently but I also didn't see a way because of how the world is. It was heartbreaking.

I couldn't leave the book's world after finishing it and googled reviews on it—that's how I found out that it's based on a true legend. I read the entire Wikipedia page on Xi Shi and marvelled at how the author kept all the elements of the real events while making it a rich story. The author even managed to stay true to both the popular assumed endings of Xi Shi's story! I admired the story even more after reading Wikipedia.

This is the only book that deviates from Ann Liang's general topics of academia and Chinese identity crisis. So far, at least. I was skeptical about how it would be because it's something wildly different from her other books but it convinced me that she should write more books like this. I really want another historical fiction book from Ann Liang.

I recommended the book to a friend who got the paperback and she annotated basically the entire book. She absolutely loved it too. So when I say that this is the BEST book by Ann Liang, I mean it. I really hope she writes more books like this or ventures out to other genres.

This book also showed that Ann Liang's writing is great beyond the YA stories she writes. I've noticed other authors' works where their YA books are great but their Adult books fall flat or the characters feel immature. The writing style for YA is fairly simpler as well so not all authors do well with transitioning to other categories. There was definitely no problem with that here. In fact, if I had read only A Song to Drown Rivers, I would have assumed that Ann Liang is a historical fiction writer.

I took a break from Ann Liang's books after this one because it affected me so much. I thought about the story for DAYS. I basically had a book hangover.

i am not jessica chen

After a 2 week break, I returned to my Ann Liang-binge and picked this one because it sounded really intriguing and not "happy" because I wasn't in the mood for happy. It was also popular around this time so I picked it up after hearing good things.

Unlike the first 2 contemporary books that I read, this one includes magical realism. It still had similar themes as the first two but the added magical realism made it something new and more intriguing.

Jenna Chen has always been overshadowed by her cousin Jessica Chen—in studies, popularity, grace, talent, etc. One day she wishes that she was Jessica and actually wakes up in Jessica's body. She has no idea what's happening, where Jessica went, or how to return. Initially, she's happy-ish about it but soon she realizes that being Jessica isn't a breeze. The longer she stays as Jessica, "Jenna" begins to disappear from the world. She races to figure out to how return things to how they were.

I really loved the theme of this story. Jenna has talents that set her apart but is constantly compared to Jessica, to the point that she started comparing them herself all the time. However, when she lives as Jessica and tries to keep up as Jessica, she realizes that Jessica's life is not the breeze that she thought it was. Jessica puts immense pressure on herself and deliberately pretends as if everything comes easy to her even though it doesn't. Jenna learns that what you see and envy is not what it is actually like.

This is a great story in learning to see the best aspects in YOU instead of seeing what you lack. I really liked how Jenna learnt to appreciate her life, family, and skills. It took time but she got there. Considering how a lot of students (my past self included) lose themselves in comparison, even comparing things that are out of their control like family finances, this book is amazing because it forces us to look at the other side through Jenna.

The book is fast-paced. It is dark and gritty, laying bare ugly parts of being a student. Some parts of the book were actually painful to read because I related to it so much. It reminded me of my high school years and how.. tumultuous they were. Jenna's ugly jealousy and envy wasn't softened or diluted. As teenagers, things like grades, friends, and college admissions are the core of our world and if they don't work out, it feels like we're nothing. That feeling was brought through well here.

I liked that the book showed a dark side of academia without being the typical dark academia aesthetic that's going around lately. This actually shows the ugly parts of being a student without "vibes" like studying in libraries and having open rivalries. No one would call this dark academia because it doesn't really fit the aesthetic that has become viral, but this is honestly more true than most of the dark academia books I've read.

Ann Liang's writing sucked me in once again, making me forget about my world and life. For the few hours when I was reading this book, I was Jenna and I was going through all those emotions. Another one-sitting book.

The romance was a minor sub-plot which, honestly, could have been eliminated. The only thing I liked about it was that it was minor and wasn't a part of the main plot. Looking back now, it didn't make much of a difference other than one place which pushed Jenna to a turning point. I'm guessing the romance was added because it's hard to call a book YA without it? And people would revolt, I guess? I actually can't think of popular YA books that don't have romances in them and the main character isn't queer. I Am Not Jessica Chen would have been a 5 star read if the romance wasn't there.

if you could see the sun

Another dark-ish YA book with magical realism. It's purely coincidental that I picked up the only 2 books with magical realism (so far?) one after the other. Maybe I would have enjoyed them even more if I knew what each book had and spaced them out but reading them consecutively somehow also elevated the experience.

Alice Sun discovers has always felt invisible at her school and finds out one day that she actually turns invisible sometimes. Like any kid of a family strapped for cash and a looming financial burden, she quickly figures out a way to make money from this ability. Exposing people's small secrets is one thing but indirectly assisting in crime somehow? Where will she draw the line?

The main emotion that bleeds out of pages is desperation. I didn't have an experience like hers in school but the way I lost myself in the story, I might as well have. Reading from Alice's perspective, reading her thoughts, puts us in her place. We see her going astray a little by little but it's like a downward roller coaster, careening towards something. I acutely felt her desperation for money, her disregard for personal safety because she's about to lose her scholarship and education, and her moral crisis. The way Alice wanted to be powerful and raw.. omg. It lowkey had my heart racing. The desperation for it wasn't softened AT SLL.

Quoting Andge @ Down The Rabbit Hole, If You Could See the Sun tackles the overarching question: what lengths would you go to to be seen by others?

I loved the rawness of emotion in this book. Being a teenager is exactly like that. One scene feels like a defining moment. One comment from someone is like an identity brand. One mistake feels like the end of everything. Somehow, Ann Liang brings alive high school life in a way that I connect with whatever I had in common, leading me to "relate" even though the story is quite different.

Alice's arc was really nice too. She learns a lot in the book, especially that things are not actually like what she assumed, and she faces things that are character-defining. She finds friendship that she really needs. There is a boy and a small romance but the story is irrefutably about her. It's about her understanding to stand up for herself, find friendship in places where she thought she was shunned, and find her spine to stand up to inequality that led her to a disastrous path.

The book doesn't tie off everything neatly—there has to be consequences for the things that Alice has done, after all. However, there is still some type of happy ending. It was actually a bit underwhelming because there was so much to the rest of the story. The ending was on a lighter note compared to the rest of the book which felt a bit off too.

Despite the ending, the book was great. I read this in one sitting as well. The writing was immersive. The main character was clearly morally grey and relatable. It's surreal that this was Ann Liang's debut, it's great.

never thought i'd end up here

After reading and liking all the backlist books, I was sure that I'd enjoy Never Thought I'd End Up Here. Especially since it looked to share themes from previous books. The setting is a bit different, though, so I looked forward to what the author would do with it.

The book stars Leah Zhang who is sent by her mother on a trip across China to reconnect with her homeland, culture, and become familiar with Mandarin again. It's a story about finding oneself in a place that is at once familiar and unfamiliar to you.

It was everything I expected and more. I loved it. Leah's journey is front-and-centre. She's initially skeptical about this trip that her parents sent on but she saw it as an escape. She's embarrassed by her low knowledge of the culture and language in the beginning, which is supposed to be hers, but with every stop of the trip she becomes more familiar with them and finds herself in them.

The part about stumbling with one's language and being ashamed about it struck me the most. I am quite ashamed about not being super fluent in my mother tongue and avoid talking to others of the same language because I'm afraid of messing up and "ruining my reputation". I tried learning to read and write my language too but because the script isn't used around me at all, it isn't easy and got left behind.

Reading about how Leah forgot most of her Mandarin after growing up in America and is so ashamed that she jumbles up her sentences even more in nervousness was highly relatable. I won't lie, it was satisfying to me that she became familiar with Mandarin again due to being in China and being surrounded by the language. Kinda gives me hope for myself 😂

Chinese culture was a highlight. Considering the plot, it's not a surprise. It wasn't too much but it wasn't less either. The view was from Leah's lens considering her past and connection so it's not a tourist guide but more of reconnecting-with-the-homeland vibes. I liked it.

The friendship focus was nice too. Leah did not have great friends and she didn't even know what to look for because she didn't have a normal experience. She didn't expect friendship on this trip either but manages to genuinely connect with another girl who's very different from her.

I didn't care about the romance. I get the hate-to-love idea but it wasn't charming or appealing at all. I could have done without the romance entirely.

Never Thought I'd End Up Here was similar to other books—the writing was engaging and immersive, the characters were relatable, the setting was fun, and the romance was meh.

on ann liang's writing overall

There are clear themes that stand out across her books so far. It's clear that most of them come from the author's experiences because they're in almost all the books and they're quite accurate in emotion.

• Academia and pride. (Not in A Song to Drown Rivers, of course.) Many sides of them but mainly the obsessive and caring-too-much-about-grades sides. I Hope This Doesn't Find You was lighter despite the main character going through a lot. I Am Not Jessica Chen and If You Could See The Sun were more emotional and raw. I liked I Am Not Jessica Chen the best because I felt like it really captured the essence of academia pressure in Asian households.
• Being Chinese-American. (Not in A Song to Drown Rivers and If You Could See The Sun.) The characters are either in America or in China after years in America/other countries. The identity crisis and feeling of being an outsider everywhere was written well. I don't have any experience with it but I could understand it.
• Chinese culture. Most of the books had elements of Chinese culture being either introduced or re-introduced to the main character. A Song to Drown Rivers was steeped in Chinese culture, of course. That book was the most fascinating for me because the others were quite modern and had fewer things. Never Thought I'd End Up Here had the most among the contemporaries.
• Character development. My favourite!!!! I love reading about characters going through a lot and growing as people. All of Ann Liang's main characters had a character journey, not just some growth. They faced trials and learnt who they are. They became almost different people in some cases.
• Complex emotions. Ann Liang definitely has the talent and skill to depict them well. All the books had complex emotions that can't be named with a word or a concise sentence. Such "vague" emotions are usually not written well enough for the reader to exactly understand everything. All of her books had them depicted well, though. I got exactly the emotions in everything, even when they were layered.
• Bad romances. Listen. I have to call it out. Except I Hope This Doesn't Find You, I didn't like any of the romances. The max I liked them was if they were a minor role so I appreciated that they didn't take up a lot of page time. Is the author actually fond of romances or is it a requirement for books nowadays? Does everything need to have a romance even if it doesn't add to the story? In real does everyone really have a romance whenever things happen in their lives and am I the only one who's living fine and dandy forgetting dating is a thing?

No matter the genres and themes, Ann Liang's writing is top-notch. I don't think I've read all of any author's books in one sitting each before Ann Liang's books. She was meant to be an author.

I'd love to read more books outside of YA contemporaries from her. I'd especially love to read books without romance because they're the one aspect that seem to almost consistently fall flat.

what should you read?

Although I read ALL of them in one sitting and mostly liked them, I don't recommend them all unless you already love Ann Liang's writing. These are my top recommendations:

• A Song to Drown Rivers. Beautiful and brilliant. (Check trigger warnings first, though.)
• I Hope This Doesn't Find You. If you like YA. The only book in which the romance was done well. Academic-rivals-to-lovers. Very cute.
• I Am Not Jessica Chen. If you like contemporaries in general. Be ready to feel some pain especially if you are/were stressed with academics and self-worth in your schooling. If you liked I Am Not Jessica Chen, you will like If You Could See The Sun too.

Pick up the other books if you love and want more of Ann Liang's books/writing.

chat with me!

Have you read any books by Ann Liang? Is there any author whose books you've never disliked? Do you think YA books without romances without ace-spectrum main characters can't become popular or aren't supported/well received?