Perfect for fans of Janae Marks and Rebecca Stead, this touching middle grade novel maps one girl’s quests to remember her Ye-Ye through scavenger hunts, reunite her fractured family, and fight against gentrification with a new friend.
Thanks to her Ye-Ye’s epic scavenger hunts, Ruby Chu knows San Francisco like the back of her hand. But when he dies, she feels lost, and it seems like everyone—from her best friends to her older sister—is abandoning her.
After Ruby gets caught skipping lunch to avoid sitting alone, her parents decide she has to spend the summer at a local senior center, with her Nai-Nai and her Nai-Nai’s friends for company. When a new boy from Ruby’s class, Liam Yeung, starts showing up too, Ruby’s humiliation is complete.
But Nai-Nai, her friends, and Liam all surprise Ruby. She finds herself working with Liam, who might not be as annoying as he seems, to help save a historic Chinatown bakery that’s being priced out of the neighborhood. And alongside Nai-Nai, who is keeping a secret that threatens to change everything, Ruby retraces Ye-Ye’s scavenger hunt maps in an attempt to find a way out of her grief—and maybe even find herself.
CHRISTINA LI is the author of Clues to the Universe. At any given time she is probably daydreaming about characters and drinking too much jasmine green tea. She grew up in the Midwest and California but now calls New York home. Find her online at www.christinaliwrites.com.