Wait for Me Book

A lot of books possess characters who are authentic enough that you can understand what they experiencing. Wait for Me took it a step further and allowed me to empathize with the characters' emotions and greatly sympathize with their sorrow.

Mina's senior year is cut out for her - she resides as president of the Honor society, maintains straight A's, and is a member of many other clubs. No one knows that her entire life is a smoothly orchestrated lie, composed by the expectations placed by her mother. Every day, she forces herself into the facade that has completely enveloped who she is. When a young Mexican man named Ysrael arrives to help at her family's dry cleaning business, Mina begins to question if the life she has is what she truly wants.

At times it was scary how similar Mina's family environment was to mine. Not just scary, but also very sad. Few books revolve around Asian-American families, but Na's Wait for me creates a high standard. I loved everything from the perfectly poetic prose to the three dimensional characters.

The feelings Mina suffer through - her hatred of her mother but also the need to satisfy her - poured off the page and spilled into my soul. I am amazed by the amount of development that she underwent in such a short novel.

While some of the secondary characters remained static and the climax could have been stronger with a bit more rising action, Wait for Me was a strong, small novel that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys family drama or wants to try reading it.