Blog Tour for The Ones We’re Meant To Find by Joan He (review and quotes)

 

 

Welcome to my stop on the street team blog tour for The Ones We’re Meant To Find by Joan He!

 

 

One of the most twisty, surprising, engaging page-turner YAs you’ll read this year—We Were Liars meets Black Mirror, with a dash of Studio Ghibli.

 

Cee awoke on an abandoned island three years ago. With no idea of how she was marooned, she only has a rickety house, an old android, and a single memory: she has a sister, and Cee needs to find her.

 

STEM prodigy Kasey wants escape from the science and home she once trusted. The eco-city—Earth’s last unpolluted place—is meant to be sanctuary for those commited to planetary protection, but it’s populated by people willing to do anything for refuge, even lie. Now, she’ll have to decide if she’s ready to use science to help humanity, even though it failed the people who mattered most.

 

 

 

The writing in this book is beautiful.

There’s more sci fi than I would normally like, but I couldn’t resist requesting this one. I loved Descendant of the Crane, so I knew I would enjoy this one, too. It’s a sad, beautiful story that made me question what was going on more than once. Kasey is the younger sister. Celia is the older sister and opposite of Kasey. When the book starts, we see two perspectives. One, Cee, is a girl alone on a island. She’s been there for three years, trying to escape and find her sister. Cee doesn’t remember much, or even see in color anymore, but she remembers Kay. It’s all that keeps her going. Our other perspective is Kasey. Her sister, Celia, has been missing for three months and presumed dead. Kasey isn’t an emotional person, but her grief is obvious. She wants her sister back, no matter what. The girls lived in a type of eco city. The book deals a lot with climate change and things caused by humans. They don’t really live in this place. They’re alive, but they live a lot of life as holos. There’s not touching, no going into the lower levels without protective gear. Celia just wants to feel the ocean. Kasey advises against it, but she will do anything for Celia. Their mother had died years earlier and their dad doesn’t seem to be around much. At least not emotionally. Celia is a social butterfly, but Kasey is more isolated. She cares about her science and the bots she ends up building.

As the book continues, we start to see how things played out. I’ll be honest and say that I spent a lot of time early on trying to figure out if Cee was a ghost or a dream. But everything started to make sense. I won’t get into anything further in the story so I don’t ruin anything. In the end, the love between Celia and Kasey is what stood out to me. That love was everything.

I gave this book 4 stars. Thank you to both Edelweiss and Netgalley for my review copies.

 

 

Quotes:

 

Logic ended where love began.

 

None of us live without consequence.  Our personal preferences are not truly person.  One person’s needs will deny another’s.  Our privileges can harm other.

 

Pain was directly proportional to the value of what was lost.

 

Would people ever willingly give up their freedoms for the good of others?

 

There are many in this world who live at the expense of others, and they need to pay.

 

 

 

Joan He was born and raised in Philadelphia but still will, on occasion, lose her way. At a young age, she received classical instruction in oil painting before discovering that storytelling was her favorite form of expression. She studied Psychology and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania and currently writes from a desk overlooking the Delaware River. Descendant of the Crane is her debut young adult fantasy. Her next novel, The Ones We’re Meant to Find, will be forthcoming from Macmillan on May 4th, 2021.