If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang
Rating: 3.5 stars
Summary:
Alice Sun has always felt invisible at her elite Beijing international boarding school, where she’s the only scholarship student among China’s most rich and influential teens. But then she starts uncontrollably turning invisible—actually invisible.
When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power—she’ll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price. But as the tasks escalate from petty scandals to actual crimes, Alice must decide if it’s worth losing her conscience—or even her life.
Ann Liang’s debut, If You Could See the Sun, was one of our most anticipated releases of 2022 due to the traction it gained across social media. It promised a “genre-bending” young adult novel with popular tropes, such as “academic rivals to lovers” and an elite boarding school setting. Paired with the riveting reviews from New York bestselling authors Chloe Gong and Grace D. Li, as well as established book blogger Siu Xi, the book garnered a great deal of media attention on platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, and Goodreads.
SPOILER FREE REVIEW
The book’s exposition features 17-year-old Alice Sun receiving unfortunate news from her parents: they no longer have the means to pay for her private school tuition. Located in Beijing, many Airington International Boarding School students are the heirs of large companies or the children of celebrities. However, Alice’s parents work low-paying jobs that barely cover their monthly expenses. Alice is the only Airington student on a scholarship, which does not even cover the full cost of her tuition. The two options Alice’s parents present to her are to attend a public school in America or a local school in Beijing.
Alice is one of the two highest-ranked students at Airington, the other being Henry Li, the heir to the second-largest tech company in the world. The two have an intense academic rivalry and are constantly at each other’s throats. However, one day, when Alice begins to feel ill and realizes she has turned invisible, she decides to seek Henry out. He is the most intelligent person she knows, so she believes he can help her with her situation. Alice comes up with a way to solve her financial issues by deciding to monetize her invisibility. With the help of Henry, she assists her peers in discovering secrets and completing tasks they need to have done through an app he makes called the Beijing Ghost.
The book covered many important topics, one being the belief that academic success is the only way to climb the social ladder. Alice constantly puts her schoolwork before her physical and mental health in hopes of one day being financially secure. She thinks this is the only way for her to rise to the top, a belief fueled by the fact that Alice is the only lower-class student at Airington. Alice is given the nickname “Study Machine” by her classmates, highlighting how she is only acknowledged for her high grades, further strengthening her belief that she will only ever succeed through academic success.
Henry is another factor in Alice’s belief that she can only have a stable future by receiving high grades. Throughout the novel, Alice brings up situations when Henry has bested her. For example, Alice and Henry participated in their school science fair when they were younger. Although Alice put in hours of work to win the 500 RMB prize, Henry still beat her. He had entered the school science fair for fun, while Alice felt the need to win for the sake of her future. Henry has the privilege of not caring because he has his father’s company to fall back on. Because Henry can still win without the anxiety of securing a stable future, Alice holds this against him. She does not understand that Henry also faces parental pressure, similar to many LHS students. We will also touch more on this in the “Spoilers” section.
Alice's high self-expectations may also be familiar to many LHS students. In a setting where peers excel in not one but multiple areas, it is common to feel inadequate. This can lead to a mindset that your peers are your competitors, causing toxic environments to form. Alice’s beliefs are also reflected in LHS students’ wishes to attend prestigious universities after high school. Many of the activities and extracurriculars that LHS students participate in are not done out of enjoyment but rather the intention of adding value to their college applications. By doing so, students put aside their happiness in pursuit of a better chance to attend top-ranking universities, which is motivated by the belief that higher-ranked colleges are a symbol of success.
The book highlights an important issue within school culture: the prioritization of education over anything else, including health. Like Alice, LHS students may feel the need to give up hours of sleep in order to balance extracurricular activities and schoolwork. They feel incapable compared to fellow students who excel in fields including math or sports. Their mental health declines in pursuit of academic and extracurricular success that comes with the motivation to perform better than their peers.
Alice also faces conflicts regarding her identity. As a Chinese girl born in America, she never feels like she fits in in either country. Combined with a lack of money compared to her rich peers, Alice believes she is unable to connect with them. Because of this, she does not go out with classmates and cannot relate to them, giving her a reputation of being cold and judgmental.
Overall, we really liked the premise of this book and thought it was a lighthearted, cute read. However, the actual book fell short of what we had expected due to the book’s marketing leading up to its release. The description mentions that “Alice must decide whether it’s worth losing her conscience—or even her life,” which felt like a stretch.
Additionally, it was heavily advertised with the trope “academic-rivals-to-lovers,” but the actual book put that on the back burner. While we both do prefer romance being a subplot as opposed to the main plot, we felt as if the romance subplot was almost forgotten at some points and too prominent in others, which made it feel unrealistic.
The plot also felt like it escalated too quickly, and the conclusion was somewhat disappointing, which we go into more detail about in the “Spoilers” section.
Even though we did not love this book, we do recognize that this is Liang’s debut novel and think she still did a wonderful job of building her reputation in the literary community.
Ann Liang’s second book, This Time It’s Real, is about a girl who writes a viral essay about a relationship despite never being in one, which leads to her pretending to date a famous actor in her class. It is expected to be published on February 7th, 2023.
SPOILERs
An issue we had with the novel was that the stakes rose too fast. The previous tasks Alice completed included following a girl’s father to see if he was cheating on her mother and stealing test answers—the latter being something Alice felt internally conflicted about, as it went against her morals. Then, the task that became the climax was kidnapping one of her classmates, the son of another student’s father’s business rival. It felt like there was no buildup to the crime. We would have liked to see the stakes rise little by little with each task and eventually end with the kidnapping.
The lack of buildup could be partially attributed to the book-length. When our physical copies arrived in the mail on the release day, we were shocked by how thin the book was—we had expected it to have more pages based on the premise of the book.
We also did not like the book’s conclusion. While it did provide a somewhat satisfying ending, we were put off by the fact that Alice’s invisibility remained unexplained. As conflicts began to resolve, Alice—or Liang—seemed to forget about her invisibility. At the end, one of Alice’s teachers also hinted that he once felt invisible earlier in his life, similar to Alice’s current situation. This felt as if Liang was trying to say that he once could also turn invisible, but it felt very sudden and rushed, further contributing to the confusion surrounding Alice’s powers.
We did like how the topic of parental pressure to perform well academically was brought up. While it originally seemed like Henry had it easy, it is revealed that when he was younger, his father would lock him in a closet with only academic work for hours at a time. Many LHS students are also pressured by their parents to do whatever it takes to receive good grades. They feel they need to meet their parents’ unrealistic expectations and sacrifice many aspects of their life to maintain a higher GPA.
The last major criticism of this book we had was the unsatisfying resolution to Alice’s school situation. Because she participated in criminal activity, Alice is asked to leave Airington after the term ends. Thus, she is truly only left with her two public school options. However, Alice’s teacher—the one that hinted at being able to turn invisible—conveniently has a friend opening a new international school and recommends her to the school. This coincidence was clearly set up for a happier ending but still felt unrealistic.