Sisters Margaret and Annalie have nothing in common. Nineteen-year-old Margaret couldn’t wait to get out of their small town and start her real life in New York City. But even she has to admit that new life hasn’t been as easy to fit herself into as she hoped.
Seventeen-year-old Annalie has always loved their town–fitting in and popular in a way Margaret never managed.
When a racist slur is painted on their garage, Annalie and her mother are devastated. Margaret is furious.
Margaret flies home ready to escalate the incident until the culprit is punished. Annalie would much rather pretend the whole thing never happened. Their mother worries about stirring up more trouble by reporting the incident.
Being back under the same roof is as awful as both sisters expected. But over a summer filled with first love for Annalie and second chances for Margaret, the girls start to think they can actually connect. Until the truth about the incident threatens to tear them apart in This Place is Still Beautiful (2022) by XiXi Tian.
This Place is Still Beautiful is Tian’s debut novel. Annalie and Margaret’s mother is Chinese, their father was Irish American with Margaret looking more Asian while Annalie can more easily pass in their majority white town. Chapters alternate between Annalie and Margaret’s narration.
Tian teases out the complexities of this sisterly relationship with meditative and literary prose. Margaret and Annalie are able to see each other as peers for the first time while they deal with the emotional fallout of the racist slur on their garage and their different feelings about how to deal (or not deal) with the situation.
Outspoken overachiever Margaret and shyly hopeful Annalie have distinct voices and their own respective arcs over the course of the summer. This Place is Still Beautiful is a deceptively simple story with a complex character study that will linger with readers long after the powerful final line. Highly recommended.
Possible Pairings: Yolk by Mary HK Choi, Huda F Cares? By Huda Fahmy, Throwback by Maurene Goo, Required Reading for the Disenfranchised Freshman by Kristen R. Lee, The Queens of New York by EL Shen, In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner
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