Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen
Liveboat, Taipei series #1
(2020) 432 pages

Final Rating: 5/10

Blurb:
When eighteen-year-old Ever Wong’s parents send her from Ohio to Taiwan to study Mandarin for the summer, she finds herself thrust among the very over-achieving kids her parents have always wanted her to be, including Rick Woo, the Yale-bound prodigy profiled in the Chinese newspapers since they were nine—and her parents’ yardstick for her never-measuring-up life.

Unbeknownst to her parents, however, the program is actually an infamous teen meet-market nicknamed Loveboat, where the kids are more into clubbing than calligraphy and drinking snake-blood sake than touring sacred shrines.

Free for the first time, Ever sets out to break all her parents’ uber-strict rules—but how far can she go before she breaks her own heart?

Review:
(SPOILERS BELOW)

If had to use one word to describe this book, it would be “messy”.

Now let’s get the big sh*t out of the way. This book contains a ton of cheating, lack of communication, bullying, mental illnesses, strict parents, and DRAMA.

Oh my lord.

First, I want to focus on the characters. There’s this love square between Ever, Rick, Xavier, and Sophie. So, let me explain how this messy love square works in the most straightforward way possible: Rick is in love with Ever but he has a girlfriend that he acts as a therapist for to a point where it is toxic for both of them; Xavier is in love with Ever but he’s in a “relationship” with Sophie that he doesn’t clear up and ends up cheating on Sophie before actually having a conversation with her that he doesn’t like her that way; Ever is in love with Rick but she leads Xavier on even though she’s not interested in him because she wants to run away from her problems; Sophie is in love with Xavier but he and Ever kissed in front of her and so she gives everyone pictures of Ever’s naked body, including her strict parents, pretty much traumatizing her and ruining her life.

So yeah, all the characters kind of really screwed up, didn’t they? Rick, to start with, is Boy Wonder. He’s the prodigy every Asian parent wishes they had for a kid. So obviously, many girls would be into him, right? Well too bad! He has a girlfriend, Jenna. But secretly, he doesn’t love her, and he is only with her because she is too mentally unstable to be without him. Ever finds out about this and doesn’t give Jenna any hard feelings, because even though she threatened that she would kill herself IN FRONT OF HIM if he broke up with her and took advantage of their relationship, she’s depressed and suicidal, so it’s fine.

Now, just to be clear, I’m depressed and suicidal. But I don’t want to use that as an excuse to use people to make me feel better, because I know that will only make my life and theirs worse. Being depressed and suicidal doesn’t mean that I have a free pass to act however I want. I’m still a human being who does things that have consequences for other people. And if I don’t keep on trying to become a better person, I will never stop being depressed and suicidal because I’ll never learn how to grow and love myself. I’ll be stuck in an endless black hole of hatred and misery. This is why, although I feel a strong sense of understanding and empathy towards Jenna, who is very similar to me in terms of struggles, I cannot approve that other characters let her run wild until the very end of the book when Rick finally sits her down and tells her that she needs to let him go.

Now Xavier is a master at NOT communicating. He basically has enough hookups with Sophie to make her believe that they are in a relationship, doesn’t explicitly clarify that he likes Ever even when he had those hookups with her (he did hint that he liked Ever to Sophie, but never told her directly), etc. He even has sex with Ever and then only waits until after they wake up in the morning to tell her that it wasn’t a casual hookup for him and that he wants to be serious. That’s something that you warn the other person you’re hooking up with before you start moving your hips and taking off your clothes! Also, that may make Ever feel guilty or have a sense of responsibility afterward.

Sophie kind of is just toxic throughout the entire book. But, as Ever reminds me, she has mental health issues and stressful expectations from her family so it’s “fine”. Ever even goes back to being friends with Sophie after the horrible bullying that she did to her! To be honest, Ever screwed up too but Sophie was just goddamn cruel. Their relationship was too complicated and unhealthy to begin with, realistically, it would’ve been better for both of them to not be friends but at least grow from their mistakes. But somehow, the author manages to squish the two of them together and forces them to have character development.

And Ever needs to work on her communication as well. The way she led on Xavier even had ME thinking she liked Xavier more than Rick for a couple of moments even though the instalove she had towards Rick was strong since page 25. Rick trying to be in a relationship with Ever immediately after he broke up with Jenna really threw me off in a whirlwind for a couple of minutes. He was so ready to be with Ever after just having to break up with his abusive girlfriend, all of his trauma had suddenly gone out the window in that specific scene I was bamboozled.

Anyway, with the amount of raging I’m doing on this book, one might wonder, why did I rate it a 5 out of 10? Let’s just say that I found all the drama entertaining enough to make me not hate the characters and the book. It was a fun, fast-paced read that engrossed me in the pages. And despite my previous ranting towards the characters, even with all their flaws, they still remind me of normal people. I think that’s what the author did right with those characters. She gave them flaws but reminded us that everyone has them and there are reasons as to why some people do the things they do. I only didn’t like how she demonstrated that mental health can be used as an excuse to hurt others, and she didn’t focus enough on the guilt or trauma some of the characters should’ve had on their decisions. I think Ever should’ve had more guilt towards what she did to Xavier and Xavier should’ve also felt guilty for his confusing actions towards Sophie and Ever. Rick should’ve felt a little more confused and unstable after finally breaking up with Jenna because he’s been under her abuse and manipulation for so long instead of being ready to start dating Ever immediately.

Overall, sometimes regular people suck, and they do stupid things that hurt others. That’s just how people are sometimes, and it took me a long time to realize that with my negative perfectionist brain. Sometimes people may wrong you in a way that you may or may not deserve, but just keep on going through life. There will be better people out there that you will learn to appreciate, and in return, you’ll feel appreciated. And it helps to try to make yourself a better person while searching for those good kinds of people, so you won’t push them away when you really need them.