This is a contemporary academic rivals to lovers (something I always had a soft spot for) at a super expensive boarding school, with a hint of something supernatural (who doesn't love a plot that involves our MC turning invisible?) and it was quite a bit of fun. Absolutely stunning cover, too.

The most notable thing about this was honestly how insanely fast I read it. Sometimes I claim something was fast but really all I meant by that was that I stayed awake until I finished it, but yesterday I started at 6PM *during* my commute home (stopping because I get intensely motion sick), ate dinner, that fun stuff, and ended around 11. According to Libby I finished it in just over 4 hours of reading, and like 20 minutes of that 4 hours was while standing in heavy rain and trying to keep wiping the screen and my glasses off. That means I literally kept pace with what would be like a 2x audiobook speed. I feel like a machine or something.

Moving on, I am such a sucker for the thing where she hates her rival but the moment she turns invisible and doesn't know what to do, he's the one she feels like going to. Oof, also, her interacting with him while invisible and him not quite knowing where she is just adds a little something to a scene weirdly.

The essence of the plot is basically that she's the top student at a *very* expensive private school in Beijing (along with the male lead), and also the only scholarship student. Her parents tell her they can't afford to let her finish there right around the time she *turns invisible* and this keeps happening at random and messing with her life so she decides to monetize it so she can stay at the school and convinces her rival to be her business partner and does tasks for her rich and well-connected classmates and it gets morally grey. I could never be Alice.

Side note, I love that I've finally reached the stage of moral development where I retain my own set of morals separate from the main character when I'm reading because I swear when I was like 12 no actions phased me, I just went right along with it.

I also don't know that I've ever read just like a contemporary YA book set in China before. Can't say I've even thought about any subset of that culture before, and setting elements were painted very well so it was nice.

I (coincidentally) spoke to 5 Chinese international students yesterday (it was an intro linguistics tutorial, we had to tell our group what languages we spoke), and after a brief bout of googling apparently over 15,000 Chinese international students go to my university across the campuses, which kind of corroborates my thoughts that it's not *that* hard to get into a decent enough international university, like, sure, I don't go to Harvard but all these commerce students are gonna be just fine anyway (unlike my own psychology major self but that's beside the point but even I've made research connections). A girl that has been top of her class for 7 years at some fancy private school would definitely be able to replicate that performance at some random US public school if she had to, I feel. A girl who works that hard could probably do well in most situations. Of course they wouldn't be as favourable as staying at her current school but still in my opinion definitely not nearly worth kidnapping for. Oh, also, I love Alice's parents.

Ooh also I gotta say you gotta be fit to be a good invisble person. You would've heard my breathing (and stepping) from miles away if I was chasing somebody up stairs. I just love the like super spy vibes going on.

I think that about covers it. This got a bit long because my phone went kaput on me and I feel lost without it so I'm distracting myself. 4 stars

If You Could See the Sun - Likewise Book Reviews

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