Front Desk Book Review

Title: Front Desk
Author: Kelly Yang
Type: Fiction
Published: 2021
Pages: 354
TW: Xenophobia, Racism, Poverty, Violence, Assault, Bullying

“You know what you are in English? You’re a bicycle, and the other kids are cars.” 

Front Desk is the first in a middle grade series focusing on the life of Mia Tang. Struggling financially, Mia’s parents cut a deal with the owner of a local motel: they will run it and in return, they will live there. Mr. Yao (the owner) agrees to this, but being the greedy man he is, makes it hard for the Tangs to truly earn a comfortable living. Mia wants to help her parents at the motel so decides to station herself at the front desk to welcome guests. After a while the motel life becomes normal for them, but with Mia’s parents using some of the rooms to hide immigrants, trouble when one of the “weeklys” experiences racial discrimination, and of course, Mr. Yao always scheming to swindle them out of the earnings, things aren’t as easy as they should be!

This was the June pick for Amy’s Book Club and having loved a lot of Middle Grade books in the past, I was excited to discuss one for the book club. Right off the bat it became clear that Mia and the other characters in this book would be easy to love. Mia herself felt like the right mix of mature and immature given than she is so young, sometimes MG protagonists are too wise beyond their years and it makes the book unrealistic. But I liked her peppy outlook on life, while also feeling her pain when things unfairly didn’t go her way.

There was a surprising amount of depth to this book and while there are heavy themes such as xenophobia, racial discrimination, and bullying throughout, for me the most emotional element was Mia’s relationship with her mother. A lot of her mother’s apprehensions and worries stemmed from her own life and so not only was the book a great reflection of the immigrant experience, but it also showed how Mia wanted to step out from her parents’ journeys and start her own.

On top of all that, the friendships Mia strikes up both with another girl at school (Lupe) and one of the weeklys (Hank) were wonderful and allowed Mia to discover the world through them as well as find comfort when she was knocked down. I also adored Mia’s passion for writing – I was rooting for her the whole way!

All in all this is an incredible heartfelt and moving story told through the eyes of loveable and bright little girl. I do agree with some comments about the ending saying that you do have to suspend your disbelief a little, but books are about escapism right!? So I didn’t mind if things felt a little improbable at the end!