The Perfect Escape

February 1, 2020

Gr 9 Up-Kate is desperate to get away from her controlling, tech pioneer father, while Nate is determined to fund his entrepreneurial ideas and make it to college while keeping his immigrant family afloat. When Kate and Nate meet at their zombie escape room job, they commit to a large-scale zombie survival challenge that, if they win, will leave them with a much-needed lump of cash. With a number of external obstacles to handle, including a case of eczema, an old crush who still holds Nate's attention, and a wealthy classmate putting pressure on Nate to drop his grades in exchange for thousands of dollars, this book struggles to stay organized and maintain a steady pace. While many of the conflicts are interesting and original, their individual impacts are never fully realized, making their introduction and continuation feel more like distractions than plot points. Park highlights Nate's experience as a Korean American, bringing an #OwnVoices perspective to the novel, and most of the characters are painted realistically enough for the purposes of the plot. However, Nate and Kate's chemistry falls flat and a surplus of secondary and tertiary characters overwhelms the relatively short book. VERDICT Readers may find this to be like a stock photo-it gets the point across, but without the genuine emotion to make it truly worth collecting.-Abby Hargreaves, District of Columbia Public Library

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2020
Aside from their mutual obsession with zombies and zombie films, Nate and Kate seem like polar opposites. Korean American high school senior Nate Kim works hard--whether as a full scholarship student at the exclusive private high school he attends (and is bullied at) or at his job at the Zombie Laboratory escape room. Seeing how hard his immigrant parents struggle to make ends meet, he aspires to start his own business after college and get rich. On the other hand, as the daughter of the CEO of the AI robotics company Digitools, Kate Anderson, who is white, lives in a huge, high-tech house, also attends private school, and uses the credit card her absentee workaholic father leaves her to order food for her solo dinners. Their worlds collide when Kate starts working at the Zombie Laboratory, wanting to make her own money and choose her own destiny. Things take off when Kate asks Nate to be her partner in Zombiegeddon, a weekend zombie survival challenge that offers a generous cash prize. Debut author Park's well-written title slyly infuses what seems like a typical teen romantic comedy with thoughtful treatment of diversity, microaggressions, classism and class struggles, immigration, and privilege while capturing the sweetness of two nerds falling for each other. The dose of action toward the latter half of the book comes about naturally, helping to propel the plot forward. A charming, thoughtful portrayal of complex teen relationships. (Fiction. 14-18)

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