So much new Asian-lit in my TBR, I’m loving it

Confession: When I was a teenage writer still trying to find my voice, I tried to mimic the way Western - mostly American - authors wrote. I adopted their voice, their narrative style and characters' mannerisms and speech. But those didn't sit right. The stories I wrote weren't rooted in my reality, my country or my neighbourhood. They didn't feature the people I interacted with daily. They were textbook characters created in the likeness of those from my favourite authors' books. They even had Western last names. They went to high school (not secondary school, as we call it here), and they talked like the American teenagers I saw in movies. Why? Because I thought that if I wrote a story from my perspective, no one would be able to relate to it, much less want to read it. I thought that if I created a world based on my reality, my narrow slice of life in this little corner of the world, I would isolate readers from the rest of the world. I thought the Western reality was the only relevant one. 

FLIGHT AND FURY (RIPTIDES #1)

In a world where shape-shifters are divided into kingdoms, the sea children and sky children are at war over stolen magic. Amber is a sea daughter, the last surviving royal who has been hidden on a remote island ever since she was eight. Training as an apprentice in a black market for dark magic, she has…

THE PROMISES WE MAKE

  THE PROMISES WE MAKE is a 71,000 word contemporary YA novel about a girl who embarks on a search for her estranged runaway sister with the clues hidden in a series of unsent letters from her sister.  

BEFORE I REMEMBER YOU

17-year-old Isabel is running from her memories, the ones that remind her of her hand in the death of her best friend’s sister. When she finds out that her friend Wes has been visiting a memory killer, an illegal witch-doctor who erases memories, she decides to have her own painful memories erased too. Soon, Isabel and Wes…

THE DREAMCATCHERS

Contrary to popular belief, Becca isn’t crazy. Sure, she can communicate with spirits through her dreams, and sometimes they make her do things while she’s asleep. But she’s learnt to keep her mouth shut when it comes to her dreams. So no one knows about the recent one she’s been having, where a woman keeps…

BACKSTAGE

17-year-old Chloe Song is forced to put school on hold and get a full-time job when her parents’ business venture fails. Meanwhile, Ethan “Prince” Wane has fallen from grace after his hiatus from the entertainment scene. His lacklustre comeback is proof that he is being dethroned. On top of that, he’s lost his private suite…

BLOOD PROMISE

Frosty Island has a secret. And, if the spate of deaths and freak accidents is anything to go by, that secret is about to blow up. 17-year-old April Renn is a reformed changeling who survives on blood fruits found on the island instead of human souls. But as the supply of blood fruits dwindles, April…

UNTIL MORNING

18-year-old Lexi Keen has found her soul-mate. The problem is, she has never met Night, the elusive street artist who leaves his paintings in the nooks and crannies of the city. Still, that doesn’t stop her from penning letters to him and dreaming about living in his paintings – until she finds herself in his…

NO ROOM IN NEVERLAND

17-year-old Gemma, whose patchy memories of her childhood consist of regular visits to the idyllic, imaginary Neverland before her mother fell sick. When Gemma meets Cole, a disenchanted boy who stirs up more than just memories of her adventures in Neverland, she begins to piece together the tragedy of her half-forgotten childhood: her mother sick…

LAMBS FOR DINNER

(Straits Times Press, 2013) There is no such thing as coincidence – at least, not according to Skye. It wasn’t a coincidence that her father died seven hours after she broke a mirror, and it isn’t a coincidence that her imaginary friend is reappearing now that she meets Drew - the mysterious boy with a…