The Christmas Clash by Suzanne Park

 

Title:  The Christmas Clash

Author:  Suzanne Park

Narrated by:   Jay Lai and Jennifer Sun Bell

Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC

Length: Approximately 8 hours and 17 minutes

Source: Review Copy from NetGalley.  Thank-you!

Do you have a favorite mall?  Do you still have a mall around you?  Did you like hanging out in one as a teenager?  My Mom worked at Pearlevision / NuVision in the mall when I was a teenager.  It was great fun to go to work with her and my sister or a friend and then roam the mall all day long.  The mall of my youth is a bit sad and empty now when I go back home.  I enjoy our mall in Green Bay and my daughter thinks it is very exciting.

The Christmas Clash involves two teenager who work at a mall, Chloe Kwon and Peter Li.  Peter Li drives Chloe Kwon up a wall.  While Chloe works taking pictures of kids with Santa, Peter works at a North Pole Virtual Reality center right across the atrium from her.  As they fight over business, they are carrying on the fight between their parents.  Their parents each own a restaurant in the food court, the Lis sell Chinese food and the Kwons sell Korean food.  They have a bitter rivalry that their children don’t understand.  When Chloe and Peter discover that the malls new owner plans to evict everyone and tear the mall down, they ban together to save the mall.  Will they be able to save the mall and will their feelings for each other change?

This book was so delightful.  Chloe and Peter were great characters with great teenage angst . . . and chemistry.  I also enjoyed a friends to lovers’ trope as was the case in this story. . . although it is a teen story so it was more friends to boyfriend/girlfriend.  I like that it was like Romeo and Juliet, but the rivalry was between two food court restaurant owners.  I especially liked when Chloe started to question why exactly there was a rivalry and decide not to continue carrying it on to the next generation.  Both characters face racism as Asian Americans and I thought it was an interesting look into a realistic aspect of their lives.

I loved Chloe’s zest for fighting for saving the mall and her parents business.  The story of being in the mall brought back so many happy memories of my youth and local mall. I also liked that she had goals in life as a photographer and she pursued her goals.  Both her and Peter face challenges as the second child compared to their “perfect” older siblings and it was a great thing for them to bond over.  It was a great coming of age story for them both.

The story was a dual narrative told in chapters from Chloe or Peter’s perspective. Jay Lai and Jennifer Sun Bell were perfect narrators and were the voices of the characters to me.