This touching and entertaining YA graphic novel follows an endearing Vietnamese American teen who desperately seeks true love despite her family's history of tragic romances.
High school junior Valentina Trãn once adored Valentine's Day--so much so that she imagined a cherubic cupid "Saint V" was her guide. When Val learns that her mother didn't die years ago, as her father claimed, but left him, Val disavows the holiday all together. Saint V transforms into the specter of the man he really was, and the girl decides to give him her heart in a year if she fails to find true love--something that eluded every one of her ancestors. When Val sparks a connection with a boy in a lion dance costume, she is determined to make the ensuing relationship succeed. She joins Leslie's lion dancing group, but even as Val and Les go on dates and lion dancing becomes Val's "everything," Les doesn't see Val as his girlfriend. Time is almost up on her bargain with Saint V, and Val isn't sure she's found someone worthy of her heart.
Lunar New Year Love Story is a buoying tale about being open to the pain of love from Eisner- and Printz Award-winner Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese). Val's journey to find love parallels a careful nurturing of frayed familial ties with her father and her previously estranged grandma. Caldecott Honoree LeUyen Pham (Outside, Inside) brings remarkable depth to Yang's heartfelt story through her digital illustrations. Throughout, beautiful spreads evoke the flouncing effects of the intricate costumes. In this charmingly sweet comic, Yang and Pham equate the lion dance with love. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer