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Prologue: The Setup
"绝对不行!" (Absolutely not!)
Sophie Huang slammed her coffee mug down on her mother's kitchen table hard enough to make the jade plant rattle. Her mother, Linda Huang—professional matchmaker, meddler extraordinaire, and the bane of Sophie's dating life—simply smiled that knowing smile that had successfully paired off half of Seattle's Chinese-American population.
"你还没听我说完," her mother said calmly in Mandarin. (You haven't even heard me out yet.)
"I don't need to hear you out. The answer is no. N-O. 不要." Sophie switched between English and Chinese, her usual pattern when she was agitated. "I'm not going on a blind date with Ryan Chen."
"It's not a blind date. You know Ryan. You went to Chinese school together."
"Exactly. I know Ryan Chen. He's pompous, competitive, and probably still holds a grudge about that spelling bee in ninth grade."
"You cheated in that spelling bee," her mother pointed out.
"I did not cheat! I just happened to see the word list beforehand. That's called preparation."
Her mother gave her a look that said she knew exactly what Sophie had done, but after twenty-eight years, she'd learned to pick her battles. "Ryan has done very well for himself. He sold his startup last year. He's on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Very handsome. Very successful."
"Very full of himself, probably."
"Duoduo, listen to me." Her mother switched to her nickname, the one that meant "many" because Sophie had been a twin who absorbed her sibling in utero—a fact her mother brought up whenever she wanted Sophie to feel guilty. "You're almost thirty. All your cousins are married. Even Amy found someone."
"Amy married a white guy she met at Coachella. I don't think that counts as your matchmaking success."
"The point is, everyone is settling down. Don't you want to find someone? Have a family?"
Sophie sighed. This was the eternal conversation. Her mother, who had built a thriving business matching eligible Chinese-Americans with each other, couldn't understand why her own daughter refused to be matched.
The truth was more complicated than Sophie wanted to admit. She'd spent her whole life watching her mother arrange marriages—some successful, some disasters, all of them based on the idea that compatibility could be calculated like a math equation. Two Chinese families plus similar education levels plus acceptable careers equals happiness.
Sophie didn't believe in equations. She believed in chemistry, in passion, in the messy unpredictable nature of actually falling in love.
Not that she'd tell her mother that. Linda Huang thought chemistry was what happened in a lab, not between two people.
"Fine," Sophie said fin...
Jade Chen grew up between two worlds—attending Chinese school on weekends while binge-watching K-dramas at night. As a second-generation Chinese-American, she spent years as a cultural consultant in Hollywood, frustrated by the lack of authentic Asian representation in romance. From her loft in Los Angeles' Koreatown, Jade writes the stories she never saw growing up: Asian characters with rich inner lives, cultural authenticity, and unapologetic sexuality. Her work celebrates food as love language, explores diaspora identity, and centers Asian women as romantic and sexual protagonists.
