An Echo in the City

An Echo in the City, by K.X. Song, is new YA fiction set in the Hong Kong protests. It’s a dual-perspective novel and that classic romance-novel style works well here to develop two protagonists on opposite sides of a dramatic and deeply personal conflict.

Teenage Phoenix is a whirl of private school and test-prep classes, on a path to an American Ivy League school, just like her siblings and friends. Her older brother, Osprei, has a new girlfriend who’s involved in the pro-democracy protest movement. Phoenix doesn’t usually pay attention to her brother’s constantly-changing girlfriends, but Suki is different, with a focus on political activism and direct action. Soon Osprei and Phoenix are attending meetings and participating in protects, and Phoenix begins to feel a sense of purpose and connection, which highlights what she’s been missing at school and at home.

At the same time, in a very different Hong Kong, Kai enters the police academy, both to earn a living and to prove himself to his distant, estranged father. They haven’t seen each other or even really communicated in ages, but possibly being back in the same city and same career field might bring them together. Obviously, being on the police force puts Kai in direct conflict with the protesters. The police call the protestors cockroaches, and look for young cadets who might be able to infiltrate student meetings.

I enjoyed the connections between the different arcs about young people and their parents’ expectations. Kai and Phoenix’s parents have different goals for their kids, which ties into their different social classes, too. This work as a teen romance and with the larger themes of Hong Kong identity. I was particularly interested in Phoenix’s teenage resentment around her parents’ expectations. She’s in an international high school, focused on SAT prep, APs, English classes, etc., etc., and it’s a familiar path for a lot of my own students. Readers can see Phoenix’s life advantages from her background, as she switches easily between languages or calls her family’s private driver for a pickup. I understood why her parents were setting her (and her siblings) up for a certain kind of successful future AND I understood why she felt trapped there.

Part of the book felt scattered, blending YA romance elements with a serious setting and a dramatic coming-of-age story. There’s a meet-cute with a swapped phone, but there are also dramatic speeches about freedom, and scenes of violence police brutality. This works at times to highlight the immediacy and drama of the protects intersecting with daily Hong Kong life. But the mashup felt forced in places, especially at the end. So much of the book sensitively explores conflicting loyalties and looks at characters facing limited choices, so much that I felt disappointed by the cheery wrap-up. Oh, there’s a dream art school for Kai, in his dream city with a full-scholarship deadline a week away? That didn’t seem to match the rest of the book! That’s the kind of tidy, cute ending we expect from a YA romance, but it worked against his whole background of growing up poor and lacking opportunities.

The overall focus of An Echo in the City is about our characters in situations without an easy answer. The book tells two personal stories, exploring first love and questions of loyalty and personal choice, in a period of heightened political turmoil.