First Love Language - Stefany Valentine - ★

AUTHOR: Stefany Valentine

GENRE: YA Romance

PUBLICATION DATE: January 14, 2025

RATING: 1 star.

In a Nutshell: A YA “romantic dramedy” (Official label.) This didn’t work for me in any way: plot, writing, characters, agenda, realism, romance, drama. The only thing I liked other than the cover was the Taiwan rep. It hurts me to rant about a debut OwnVoices book, and I tried my best not to, but I just can’t recommend such a poorly written book that sends the wrong message to youngsters.

Plot Preview:

Seventeen-year-old Catie Carlson, a half-white half-Taiwanese girl, doesn’t remember much about her birth mother. Her parents divorced when she was just five and her father moved with her to the USA, and later remarried a white single mother. After his death two years ago, Catie feels like she has no family of her own, even though her adoptive mother – her father’s second wife – treats Catie with the same love as she does her own daughter.

When Catie stumbles into an opportunity to learn Mandarin from a young co-worker at the summer spa, she grabs the chance, even if it means teaching him how to date in exchange for the Mandarin lessons. So what if Catie herself is not a dating expert? She can surely fake it. Using her late father’s copy of “The Five Love Languages” and his annotated notes, Catie becomes a dating coach to Toby. But as she helps him get closer to his crush, she realises that she too might be in danger of a one-sided love.

The story comes to us in Catie’s first-person perspective.

Almost every YA novel I read doesn’t work for me. The exceptions are far and few between. This has nothing to do with the fact that I am decades older than the YA age group. If the age criterion were that important, I would have hated even middle-grade and children’s fiction, which I don’t. So before you come at me for raining on the parade of a debut YA work and for attacking a book not meant for my age range, know that I don’t enjoy doing this. I always try hard to think of positives, but while reading this book, the only thing I felt in common with the FMC is the repeated urge to say “Ugh!”

Bookish Yays:

😍 The cover.

Bookish Okays:

🤔 The Taiwan rep, at least on paper. Practically, we barely learn anything about Taiwan as Catie herself is blank about its culture. Then again, it is always nice to see rep from a country underrepresented in fiction.

🤔 “The Five Love Languages” and its representation in the title and the planned dates. I like how Catie’s Dad supposedly read the book but added his own annotations when he found the content problematic. But we don’t get to see any of the annotations, nor do we get an actual experience of the five love languages. Catie is supposed to plan her fake dates with Toby around these five concepts, but we don’t see her do any planning at all.

🤔 The genealogy subplot – whereby Catie tries to search for possible Taiwanese family members – has potential, but it is too convenient in its development and disappointing in its eventual progress.

Bookish Nays:

🙄 The “romantic dramedy” label. The romance is corny, the drama is on hyper mode, and the comedy is almost non-existent.

🙄 Catie. Not at all a likeable character to me, what with her constant lying, incessant whining, wilful ignorance of anything not directly connected to her, and lack of concern for her adoptive mom’s financial struggles. Her central topics were Toby, makeup, her “biological mother”, and the loss of her Taiwanese heritage. The first-person POV from such an egocentric character can be exhausting.

🙄 Though there are some solid secondary characters, their portrayal is almost unidimensional. We don’t get to see Catie’s genuine connection with any of them beyond some perfunctory scenes. I wish there had been more depth to all the characters (including Catie.)

🙄 The repetition of Catie’s insecurity over being “adopted” and not having connection to her Taiwanese family. Catie is half-white! And she had her birth father throughout her life; she was adopted by him and his new wife. I just don’t understand her need to distort these truths. Moreover, she keeps referring to her birth mother either by her name or as “my biological mom”, both of which sound artificial.

🙄 The book tries to offer several facts about various issues (Mormonism, Mandarin,…) but these are incorporated in an unrealistic way, usually through a character’s conversation that is full of infodumping. Quite a few dialogues sound unnatural as a result.

🙄 The convenient plot development. Catie’s finding a job, finding a Mandarin tutor, finding a genealogy expert at the local church, finding a hit on the genealogy site… everything is super easy and quick!

🙄 Toby. He might be a green flag for youngsters, but he is unbelievably perfect, which makes him a Nay for me as he sets totally unrealistic expectations about potential partners. A guy who is hot, has purple hair, works as a cosmetologist, cooks excellently, speaks Mandarin fluently,… Even when he discovers a major mistake committed by Catie, he is instantly forgiving of her. Not to forget the instant turnaround of his feelings for his original crush.

🙄 The anti-Mormon sentiment, which took me by surprise as I didn’t expect any religious content in this book. The depiction of Mormonism is very lopsided and stereotypical.

🙄 The excessive focus on looks and makeup.

🙄 The trope-y agenda and excessive social commentary. It was a checklist inclusion again, with one trans, one lesbian, one pansexual, and one nonbinary character. (I hope I didn’t miss out on any ace representation while I was rolling my eyes.) Inclusion is essential but it should also be realistic.

🙄 After all that build-up about wanting to reconnect with her biological family, we don’t even get proper closure.

Essentially, I didn’t dislike this book because it was a YA Romance. I disliked it because it was a poorly written book.

Should I be a bit generous because it's a YA book and I'm not a fan of the genre? I wish I could, but it won't be right. A higher rating means I'm telling YA readers that this is the kind of book I want them to read, that this manipulative and whiny behaviour is ‘the accepted normal’ for their generation, that they can behave the way they want and still get away scot-free without an apology or recompense, that self-obsession is fine, that accountability doesn't matter, that it is okay to ignore all the blessings you have in your life just to whine about what you don’t have. As Catie would say: "Ugh."

To any young Taiwanese youngsters whom this book helps feel seen, I am truly most happy for you. And to anyone who might still want to read this, I encourage you to read the other reviews, especially the ones written by younger readers, and take a call on this debut work. But I cannot rate a book higher just because it has OwnVoices rep and is based on a heartfelt personal experience.

My thanks to Penguin Young Readers Group for providing the DRC of “First Love Language” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t go better for me.