Sometimes, you happen to come across a book that sparks your curiousity instanty, but still is on your never-ending TBR ever since. This was the case for me with If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So. I’ve read about this book last year and the blurb grabbed my attention. However, it’s a young adult cntemporary, which I hardly read anymore. Moreover, I’m really picky with the YA that makes it to my TBR these days. Howver, I’m all for queer books, so I definitely wanted to give this a try. Was this still for me or am I really outgrowing this type of books now?

About the book

If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So
Published by HarperTeen on May 23, 2023
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9780063283268
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young adult

Elsie has a crush on Ada, the only person in the world who truly understands her. Unfortunately, they’ve never met in real life and Ada lives an ocean away. But Elsie has decided it’s now or never to tell Ada how she feels. That is, until her long-lost best friend Joan walks back into her life.

In a summer of repairing broken connections and building surprising new ones, Elsie realises that she isn’t nearly as alone as she thought. But now she has a choice to make…

My review

Before picking up a book, I often check the synopsis to remember what it’s about and to maybe set myself expectations. However, I forgot to do so for this novel, so I had no clue what I was going to read. Therefore, I went into this blindly since you can’t set yourself expectations if you can’t remember the blurb right? Anyway, I was mostly wondering whether this was still the book for me or not. It’s a queer book and even though I believe we should read these all year round, I’m more aware of this in Pride month June.

When looking into the characters, there’s not much to say. They are gentle and never overstep or anything. Therefore, they are pretty dull and not interesting enough to analyse. However, main character Elsie has some development to undergo and she does so. She’s openly queer for the outside world, but not for her family. She pretends to be straight. She and her family are from Hongkong and in the Kantonese culture, being queer is not that common. When her grandfather passes away during her exams, her grandmother travels from Hongkong to the UK to stay with Elsie and her family. Since They have’t been to Hongkong for nearly a decade, Elsie barely knows her grandparents and hasn’t had a chance to build a proper bond with them. Furthermore, her final careless summer with her best friend before university starts seems to fall to pieces since she has to stay with her grandma when her parents are at work. Elsie is clearly unhappy about it, but she settles down quite easily. When spending time with her grandma, she learns that there’s so much the family has been holding back for her. Moreover, she slowly accepts she has hidden herself from herself. She pretended to be a good Chinese girl on the outside, but therefore she pushed away her true self. Once the story progresses, she reconnects to her old self and also learns how to act in relation towards her friendships. The reconnection to her childhood best friend Joan plays an important role in this.

This book is written okay. It felt quite generic to me, but I notice I say this a lot lately. Maybe it’s just the truth these days, all books seem to have mediocre writing. It’s easy to consume and therefore I was able to finish it quickly. However, the plot couldn’t intrigue me that much. The most interesting part of this novel is the cultural explorations the author provides regarding being queer. This book is character driven, which is a perfect fit. However, there are two mystery aspects in this plotline and these were necessary to lift up this book a bit. These were the two motivations for me to continue reading though.

If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So is a nice in-betweener. The book is not bad, because the autor brings up some interesting stuff regarding culture and being queer. However, the characters are quite dull and don’t stick out. In fact, they are quite forgettabble, so is the plot. If it wasn’t for some mysteries, I wouldn’t even remember what happened. It’s not a bad book per se, but I notice myself drifting away more and more from this type of novels.