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Miss Fortune Cookie (2012)

by Lauren Bjorkman(Favorite Author)

3.49 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0805089519 (ISBN13: 9780805089516)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

review 1: Nobody knows Erin is the famous advice columnist/blogger, catering to the high school set, but her friend Linny. But giving advice can be dangerous, especially when you start figuring out who the letters are from and you are the non-Chinese girl who is sometimes more Chinese than everyone else in Chinatown.There is another adult novel which is structured using the fortune cookie motif and there is something about this structure which seems to produce novels with strong solid themes offered with a subtle sense of humor. Bjorkman is indeed writing what she knows and it shows. Erin's voice of a young adult caught in a crossing-cultures life rings true.I highly recommend this novel.
review 2: I enjoyed this but had some problems with it. It's cute and has some nic... moree messages about what it means to be a good friend and a good daughter. If there's a moral to this story, it's that it pays to be honest with your loved ones and to trust them to ultimately do right by you.On the one hand, I enjoyed the idea of a white young woman being the outsider and trying to be accepted into what would be considered a minority group elsewhere in the country. On the other...I found Erin's attempts to fit in with her Chinese American classmates awkward. Dying her hair black, striking up conversations in Mandarin with strangers on the bus...these made me cringe a bit inside.I also found the early introduction of Westboro Baptist on p.18 to be very much an infodump and out of place in the narrative. The later fictionalized account of Lowell's anti-protest was well done, the early info-dump, not so much. Rather than being introduced to Linny's character, we're treated to a min-rant about Westboro. I'm fine with ranting about Westboro, but feel it should have come later in the story after we're better acquainted with the characters.Erin has a tendency to assume that many of the letters sent to the Miss Fortune Cookie blog are from her acquaintances, whether from Mei, her mother, or even Shanice. I'm not really clear that that's actually the case or if she's just reading her own experiences into the correspondence. On the one hand, she recognizes she's putting too much of herself into her replies, but doesn't seem to recognize she's doing the same when reading the initial letters. If they really ARE from the people she assumes their from, that's a pretty big stretch of belief.As much as I enjoyed the precocious Lincoln, I don't really find him to be all that believable. He's very much the deus ex machina in Erin's relationship with Weyland. I also couldn't believe his mother was almost immediately won over by a stranger and lost her mad on that said stranger had essentially abducted her son. And then offered the stranger a regular babysitting gig. Is this really reflective of San Franciso's culture? Are people really that trusting of strangers? Even Erin's mom invites homeless transients into their home for overnights on the couch. It's a big stretch for me.I lost respect for Weyland after the hotel with his 'game-playing' comment. He and Erin have had no time to talk and don't really know one another at all. Given where they're at in their relationship, this was a real douche move.Finally...really Erin, you're going to Harvard? At $36K+ a year? When your mother doesn't make enough to even keep the phone on? I don't care how fabulous the opportunities. Don't fall for the hype and incur all that debt--go to Berkeley instead. less

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