Draft:If You Could See the Sun

If You Could See the Sun

Author	Ann Liang
Cover artist	Carolina Rodríguez Fuenmayor
Language	English
Genre	Young adult
Set in	August-November; Beijing, China
Publisher	Inkyard Press
Publication date	October 11, 2022
Pages	304
Awards	2022 Aurealis Award Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) Winners
ISBN	9780369721754

If You Could See the Sun is a 2022 speculative young adult novel by Ann Liang. Written in the perspective of 16-year-old Alice Sun, it follows Alice and her collaboration with academic rival Henry Li when she capitalizes on her newfound invisibility powers.

Plot

Yan "Alice" Sun is a 16-year-old Chinese-American student who lives in Beijing, China, and attends the prestigious Airington International Boarding School on a partial scholarship. Alice was born in Beijing, but moved to the United States at age seven to a "tiny rural" California town, where her parents opened an Asian grocery shop in an attempt to be successful in the American dream. This does not go as well as they planned, and the Sun family returns to Beijing, where her father's printing shop eventually closes and her mother's janitorial job at the hospital has less shifts, leaving the family barely getting by as they pay for Alice's tuition. The financial strains motivates Alice to succeed academically, where she is nicknamed "The Study Machine" by her peers, she vies for the top rank of the school with her academic rival, Henry Li, whom she despises since she was eleven. Henry is the epitome of Alice's goals: rich, successful, and recognized by their peers (the former who has earned the moniker "King Henry").

The book starts with Alice being invited by her parents to a brunch at a restaurant with her parents, which is a sign for Alice, who believes that she is about to be faced with news of any kind. Alice's parents inform her that Alice will be changing schools after the next semester, which she deduces her parents can no longer afford the tuition. The resulting change in schools conflict with Alice's IB coursework, where attending a local Beijing school would mean her lack of Mandarin proficiency would hinder her scores in the gaokao, or the option of attending a public school in Maine where she could possibly face racial discrimination and the fact that Alice has very little understanding of the SAT's.

Alice then attends her school's awards ceremony, and leaves the event stirring in anxiety, where she realizes she has turned invisible. In an attempt to figure out her situation, she seeks out Henry, who gives seed to the idea to capitalize on her powers after she turns invisible in her Chinese class two days later. After some advice from her Xiaoyi, Alice talks to Henry again with a business proposal, where she comes up with the idea of selling services with her invisibility powers. Though while it seems Henry was receptive of the proposal, the two do not speak over the course of three days, much to Alice's annoyance, when Henry reveals he has been developing and (illegally) setting up an app for her, named "Beijing Ghost". Alice initiates her first task which consists of tailing a cheating, wealthy middle-aged father into a high-end restaurant in the Solana shopping complex. Alice successfully albeit narrowly completes her first task, where she returns back to the Airington dorms to find out that the person who had requested the task was her roommate Chanel Cao, who then Alice realizes that the man is Chanel's father. Chanel and Alice reconcile the tension the two have had, and Chanel leaves a good review of the app, which receives a spike in "virality" from her classmates.

Alice's next few tasks consists of deleting blackmail pictures of her popular classmate Rainie Lam from her ex Jake Nguyen's phone, whom Alice exacts revenge on by emailing a teacher of his activities in clubs; a task from Evie Wu, a prodigy in Chinese literature who has poor English skills that involves Alice stealing exam answers for her for a test. Alice finds herself with a surge of confidence, but ultimately panics at the pressure of each task as it piles in conflict with her schoolwork, where she forgets that she has to take an exam that she did not study for. She then receives a task from Andrew She, which involves kidnapping fellow classmate Peter Oh due to their parents' rivalry, which Andrew explains in the task it will only to be a little while to throw off Mr. Oh. As November rolls around, the school goes on their Experiencing China trip, where Alice and Henry both grow closer together. The kidnapping does not go as planned, and Alice runs straight into their teacher, who calls Alice's parents when they return to school when their trip is cut short.

Alice's parents are disappointed with her, with her father enraged especially, who chastises her in front of the school. Afterwards, the family returns to their flat, where Alice spends the next few days helping her mother and unspeaking with her father. Henry visits, where the two attempt to shut down Beijing Ghost, which fails due to the poor connection around the area, but Alice then suggests that they transform the app into a study app, its original guise. The two then send an email to the school's board, which is replied to with a request to meet Madam Yao, the representative. The two before the meeting tells Andrew to drop the accusations against Alice, who manages to scrounge up evidence from the night of the kidnapping. When she arrives, Madam Yao explains indirectly that they are willing to pin the blame on Alice due to her financial standings, which makes her the prime target. Alice then reasons that the potential of these actions is unfair, and Henry and Chanel mention that they could easily tear down the reputation of the school with their social circles, and Madam Yao backs off. However, Alice is forced to leave Airington at the end of December. She meets up with Mr. Chen, her English teacher, who explains that to her to his friend Dr. Alexandra Xiao, who is also opening up her own international school in the Chaoyang District. He then explains that he recommended Alice to Dr. Xiao after learning of her family's situation, to which he sympathizes with from growing up similarly to Alice. Alice then meets up with Henry, where the two have plans to talk about Beijing Ghost with Chanel.

Characters

• Yan "Alice" Sun - The protagonist of the novel. Alice is a 16-year-old Chinese-American scholarship student at a wealthy international school, who is nicknamed "The Study Machine" by her peers for her ruthless intellect. Growing up in California after moving there at the age of seven, she returns to Beijing when she is 12-13 years old after her parents' plans of the American Dream fall apart. Alice aims to be the top of her school, where she competes with her rival, Henry Li, whom she despises. Her academic life falls apart when she learns that she is unable to stay at Airington due to the tuition, where her only two options of local Beijing or a Maine public school would yield poor results. Alice prides herself on her English skills, which comes at the expense of her "primary school-level" Mandarin skills. Her only ambitions include having top grades and a financially stable job after graduation.

• Henry Li - Alice's classmate and love interest. Henry is a 16-year-old Chinese boy who is the son of CEO of SYS, the world's second-biggest tech startup. Extremely wealthy, Henry used to live in England and attended with the prime minister's son. His father is implied to be relatively abusive, stemming from the abuse that he received from his own father; Henry was forced to work long hours in a dark basement to prove to his father his intelligence. Henry has a "photographic" memory, which Alice laments she has to make up for by studying long hours. Henry, unlike Alice, is fluent in Mandarin.

• Chanel Cao - Alice's roommate and best friend. Chanel is the daughter of a famous model, Coco Cao, and her father owns a chain of upscale nightclubs in Beijing. Alice describes Chanel to look exactly like her mother, like a "Taobao model." According to Alice and Chanel, Chanel grew up in Australia and regularly hangs out with her fuerdai friends. Like Henry, Chanel seems to be relatively fluent in Mandarin and often swears in a variety of languages.

• Baba and Mama Sun - Alice's parents, who work long hours to keep Alice afloat in Airington. The two of them aspired for the American Dream, but ultimately return to Beijing when Mama asks to return to China. Alice's mom used to be a nurse before moving to the US, where she now

• Xiaoyi - Xiaoyi (Chinese: 小姨; lit. 'Mother's youngest sister') is Alice's aunt. Alice looks up to Xiaoyi, whom she finds wise. She is the one who encourages Alice (much to her mom's chagrin) enthusiastically.

Themes

The book's themes are primarily focus on class, wealth, and privilege. Growing up, Liang states that her variety of schools she attended was a relative culture shock, where she met classmates who would simply not look at the price tag while shopping. This, coupled with her attending such international schools in Beijing gave her the idea to set the events of the book in. In the books, a minor character remarks that international schools are usually frequented by wealthy students who "mostly held foreign (western) passports", despite the homogeneity of the school.

As a member of the Asian diaspora, Liang writes her main characters and many of the other characters as such. The diversity of the ethnicity of the Asian characters are frequently described as cliques in these schools, where there would be groups based on their heritage language, from "Korean, Japanese, and Canto". The circumstances by which they learn English are also touched upon, as how Alice grew up in California learning English for the sake of survival, whereas Henry and Chanel both grew up with English due to the wealthy circles of their families in both England and Australia respectively. Alice also has experienced frequent microaggressions while living in the States, and her family is a victim of an implied hate crime. Even in a homogenous body, Alice experiences microaggressions from her white teachers, who she had to assert her English skills and is mixed up with another classmate of hers.

Forthcoming television adaptation

On October 11, 2022, the debut day of If You Could See The Sun, Liang announced that a television adaptation of the book would be produced by the Seoul and Los Angeles-based Bound Entertainment company, and that she would be serving as an executive producer.