Loveboat Forever is my favorite in the entire Loveboat Taipei series. Not only does it capture the same charm I’ve come to associate, but I loved the music and the museums! Keep reading this book review for my full thoughts.
Summary
Seventeen-year-old music prodigy Pearl Wong had the summer of her dreams planned: she’d been accepted into the ultra-exclusive New York Summer Symphony, where she was going to prove once and for all that she belonged in the rigid, unforgiving classical music world.
Then a fall from grace put her in need of new plans—and a new image. Where better to rebuild her shattered reputation than at Chien Tan, the Taipei summer program for elite students that rocketed her older sister, Ever, on a path to romance and self fulfilment years ago?
Pearl’s agent agrees. It’s the perfect plan. But as the alumni know, Chien Tan is actually Loveboat: a well-kept secret extravaganza, where prodigies party till dawn. There’s more awaiting Pearl at Loveboat than she could have ever imagined, like a scandalous party in the dark, a romantic entanglement with a mysterious suitor . . . and a summer that will change her forever.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
As a major fan of these YA Contemporary series, Loveboat Forever is my favorite. Set six years after the events of the first two books, Loveboat Forever is, in many ways, a story about finding our way to love. For some characters it’s about staying in love, reclaiming our love, and also about finding someone who challenges us. Too often in love we can try to find someone who seems like the ‘right choice’ but not often one who will push us. Loveboat Forever explores that and much more.
Loveboat Forever is a summer chance for reinvention and soul searching. Not only did I love the love triangle and the ways Pearl has to figure out who she wants to be, but I also loved the music. Pearl is a musician and as someone who used to sing and play violin, I loved hearing her passion for magic. Even more so, the soul searching Pearl has to go on to figure out her own identity and relationship to her growing up in the US – the Westernized view she has – was deeply relatable to me.
To wondering if we like what we like or if we just have been taught to think that that is what is art, what is valuable, what is success. What music the world deems as meaningful or ‘art’. At the same time, I loved that Loveboat Forever explores museum acquisition and theft. How difficult it is to get back what is ours and the ways museums ‘acquire’ things. A multi-layered story that delivers personal character evolution, examinations of identity and context, and music this was a win! Find Loveboat Forever on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, & Blackwells.