Customer Reviews

Wait for Me

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This novel wasn't all that great. It's basically about a girl who feels like her life is a "lie," because she's under pressure to get into Harvard. That is, until she meets this guy that shows her to... live for herself. The writing, while clearly intended to be deep and moving, I found appallingly melodramatic. The plot was standard, and it doesn't go very deep into the main character's feelings other than "I think my life is a lie"... that sort of thing.
It does make a point, however-- on how hard Asian-Americans work, what their high expectations are, and how competition with other asian american families works.

The plot was weak in this book. I felt like this story wasn't developed enough and just not interesting enough to hold the reader's attention. It was very hard to understand the parts where Suna was narrating and overall i would not say the writing was particularily good. I would not recomend reading this book.

An Na's Wait For Me is a great book for helping teens think about moral decisions. I like to use this particular title with lower level readers because the Lexile level is very low (670L) while the content is thought provoking and relevant. The cover is appealing, too, so it's attractive to readers of all levels. The content is meant for older readers (I use this book with 8th grade and up). The main character is cheating and lying in order to live up to her mother's unrealistic expectations, and she also steals from her family's store and feels forced to be intimate with a classmate who has helped her cheat and covers for her later. Readers want to like her because she is the main character, but she is definitely flawed. That's why I like it so much. I also appreciated the fact that she is Korean-American in a modern setting; we have Korean students at our school who like to read about characters who share their ethnicity. Other students felt that the pressure they feel at home to succeed led them to empathize with the main character in Wait For Me despite the fact that they did not share her ethnicity, so the book has a broad appeal. The ending is weaker than the first three quarters of the book, but it's still very worthwhile reading for the moral dilemmas the character faces.

This particular purchase on Amazon was a great deal; the price was very low for a brand new hard cover book, and I believe I got 4 copies for the price of 3. They also qualified for free shipping when I went over the minimum, so I feel that I got a very good bargain!

Supposedly Mina has everything going for her. She is an honor student on the verge of attending her senior year of college after which she plans on attending to Harvard; but is she? These are the things that she allows her mother to believe the summer before her senior year. She and her little sister Suna work days at their parents dry cleaners and Mina spends the evenings going to a college prep course at the local library. Trapped by the lies that she has told her mother, Mina has been siphoning money from her family's dry cleaners so that she can run away to a new life since she knows that Harvard is not in her future.

I squealed and had a few tears in my eyes after reading this beautiful and thoughtful story of two sisters struggling to find themselves and their way in less than ideal family circumstances. The narrative alternates between Mina and and Suna in the first and third person respectively. Mina, being more caught up in the day to day weight of being her mother's favored child and in being her sister's protector, has the more active voice. Suna, who is always trying to escape the world and often unplugs her hearing aid to dodge her mother's harsh nagging and criticism, is a distant observer and her brief chapters provide a fleeting emotional overview of the sisters' lives and their limited world. Even though the narratives and voices are so different the story unfolds seamlessly, and without being consciously aware of it I received information about the sisters and their family history which affects the volatile dynamics between Umma, the girls' mother, with Apa (their father) and her daughters as well.

With the exception of Mina, and Suna to a lesser extent, the development of the other characters can be a little thin, but I was okay with that because of the almost dream like quality of the style and writing of the book, and the fact that neither Mina or Suna closely examine the lives of others. Their narrative gives enough hints of the other characters that you can just begin to sketch out what their lives and motivations might be. They are all the background here since Suna cares solely for Mina, and Mina cares solely for her sister and running away from the lies she has told and the mess she has created.

Umma and her friend Mrs. Kim have a friendship that is fraught with competitiveness over their children- how smart they are and who will make it into a better school (in this case Harvard vs. Stanford) even as Umma humbles herself to looks to take help and advice from Mrs. Kim. Mrs. Kim's son, Jonathan, is a whip smart teenager taking advantage of the power position that he has over Mina. There is just barely enough insight into his actions to keep him from being one note. Mina doesn't really know enough or think enough about Jonathan to understand him, so neither does the reader.

A lot of what Mina does is questionable, I really felt for her and the considerable pressure that she was under that influenced her to make some of the choices that she did. When Ysrael enters into the story both Mina and Suna start to change in ways that are both beneficial and disastrous at the same time. I really enjoyed the dynamics- the understanding and love- between the teenagers and Suna, who is on the cusp of adolescence but trying desperately to stay a little girl. Mina can be more than a little frustrating at times with her inertia and naivete. Like I said before some of the the things that she decides to do just boggle the mind, and you wonder how she thinks it will possibly work out? But then again when I think of the things that I thought would work out as a teenager, I'm not so hard on her.

The writing in Wait for Me is beautiful and observant, and I think Na does a good job in presenting young people who aren't necessarily thinking but just doing the best that they can to navigate life. I liked this as a moving family drama with just a touch of mystery running through it. There's an end in the beginning that has you wondering how it comes about and what comes after. It's in the back of your head all throughout the book!

After reading An Na's first novel, A Step From Heaven, I felt such a deep connection with everything the author wrote about that I spent weeks searching for another one of her books. I was not disappointed, as Wait for Me was beautifully written, with complex characters and a wonderfully compelling plot. Admittedly, I did find it a bit short, but somehow that only added to its artistry.

I ordered this book for a class of mine not really too enthusiastic about it yet when I read it I couldn't put it down. I read this book in one night and really enjoyed it. I would definately recommend this book to all young adults.