Review: "Not Your Average Jo" by Grace Shim

Not Your Average Jo by Grace Shim
Published March 2024 via Kokila
★★★

It's a really bad sign when there's a typo in the first sentence: When you're an Asian Americn... (1).

Fortunately the state of the proofreading improves from there, but the book fell a little flat for me. It's ambitious, tackling microaggressions and overt racism along with the nepotism of the entertainment industry. But the only character who's fully fleshed out is Riley, the main character, and she's not awfully likeable. She's a high school senior but feels more like a fifteen-year-old in maturity (pro tip: a school-wide performance with people who can make or break your career is not the time to throw a tantrum—even if you're right about the things you're tantrum-ing about), and just kind of inconsistent. Her fancy LA boarding school isn't much better (they can give out all room assignments ahead of time but don't know who your roommate will be until you move in...?), and I never figured out what the school's goal is—the entire goal for Riley seems to be to get a record deal with a band she's been assigned to without her prior knowledge (working with people she doesn't particularly like, some of whom are blatantly racist), and there's never any suggestion that she might have other goals for herself, or that the school might support other options, etc. The book treats this largely as a question of racism (Riley being used to prop up white students' future careers), and while that might be part of the case, it's also a bigger (unaddressed) issue for the school.

So...well intentioned, and I'm glad to see such a direct discussion of anti-Asian racism, but not really the book for me.