It's been a long time since I read an entire book in one sitting, it's been a long time since I posted a book review, and it's been a long time since I sat in bed sobbing over words on a page. This one hit the trifecta; it broke me, and so I'm sitting in a communal kitchen at 11:30 at night with my fingers flying over the keys.
The Other Side of Together by Emily Cox and Nicole Allen is about many kinds of love. Love for the family that's related to you, love for the family that chooses you and love for the people you choose to love, even if you're not supposed to. Meili and Marcus live in San Francisco. She's the daughter of Taiwanese immigrant restaurant owners and dreams of being a chef. Marcus is the star of the soccer team on his way to an Ivy League Universit,y and the son of local detective, Ray.
Meili and her family are undocumented immigrants living in America, and she is involved with an older man named Nick, whose father helped her family enter the country illegally and set up their restaurant. At first, Nick appears to be helping her with her dreams of being a chef, promising her cooking lessons, internships, exposure and the opportunity to move to Los Angeles. It soon becomes apparent that Nick wants more from their relationship, and he becomes aggressive and violent in his pursuit of Meili.
It's on the way home from one of these meetings that we are introduced to Marcus. Gorgeous and popular, Marcus is on his way to an Ivy League school with a full scholarship. He's the sports star every YA novel needs, and his introduction made me think that the novel was going to circle around the cliched trope of the high school heart-throb falling in love with the shy nerd. I was put off at first because it seemed like a story that had been told over and over again.
After a brief introduction, Marcus and Meili begin communicating via secret love notes passed between neighbour Guo Mama, and they form an immediate connection. But there's a catch. Not only can Meili not fall for Marcus because of her family's immigration status, but Marcus can't fall for Meili either. Marcus's heart and body must remain his own until he graduates. His father got his girlfriend pregnant at 18, only for her to disappear. This left him with a young son and a hatred of the fairer sex stronger than that of the most aggressively homosexual male. Ray expects his son to swear off women the same way he has, and has promised him a motorbike if he stays away from the temptresses that walk his halls until after he graduates. Girls, dating and relationships are off limits if he wants to ride off into the sunset on a shiny set of wheels. Marcus's member has to remain permanently concealed.
This resolve begins to falter once he starts spending time with Meili, but he is remarkably self-controlled for a teenage boy for a good half of the novel. They go on dates, they hold hands, but their lips remain sealed. Not only because he doesn't want to miss out on his free motorbike, but also because Meili refuses to tell him about her family's status and relationship with Nick. Even when he catches him aggressively attempting to kiss her, earning him the title of Face Eater, she doesn't tell him what's going on.
Alongside the Meili/ Marcus/ motorbike/ immigration drama, there's also a B-plot that could have done with fleshing out. We are told that 14 women have gone missing from the town. This isn't really mentioned again until the end of the novel.
As the novel progresses, the serious nature of what Meili is concealing becomes more apparent. Nick returns and assaults her in his apartment, and his henchman attacks Marcus on his way home. Despite these physical altercations, it's not until his grandma catches him completely ignoring his father's wishes and finally making it to second base that Meili finally flees. He thinks it's because his grandmother caught him in a jam; she knows that Marcus is likely to be attacked again and that she and her family are also in danger. Leaving his apartment, she promptly ghosts him in an attempt to keep the two of them, and her entire family, safe and refuses to reveal her secrets.
As Marcus desperately tries to reach out, Meili continues to isolate herself. Ignoring his phone calls, video chat attempts and messages despite his persistence. These attempts fall on heartbroken ears as Nick returns to San Francisco to collect his "prize". Meili flies to Los Angeles to play the role of his fiancée.
He dresses her, buys her jewels and makes it abundantly clear that her family will suffer if she refuses to play the role of his doting future wife. He owns her; she was promised to him, and it's not only until the reappearance of the missing character from the very beginning of the novel that there's any whisper of his plans unravelling.
I told you the B-plot needed fleshing out.
Su Ling returns as a waitress at the gala Nick uses to debut his future bride and tells Meili that she was trafficked and taken away from her children. As he attempts to rape Meili, Su Ling assaults him and helps her escape from LA, throwing her into a taxi that drives her from LA to San Francisco and she lands at Guo Mama's front door.
In attempts to rid himself from his heart-break, Marcus attends his senior prom with a girl called Taveh who's apparently been in love with him since the 6th grade. She plays a very small part in the novel, but is a fun tertiary character and provides light relief from the seriousness of the plot. She's cute, she dances, and she's under no illusion that Marcus has any interest in her and listens to him talk about Meili. She leaves triumphantly, pleased with herself for finally telling him how she feels, and goes off to Berkeley University without being mentioned again.
Seriously, the number of students who end up going to Ivy League schools is nothing short of a miracle.
Returning home, Marcus overhears Ray on the phone and learns that he has been lying to him. He doesn't believe all women are the devil after all and is dating a woman called Kenna, who's brief introduction causes Marcus to throw some serious shade at Ray for lying and runs to find Meili. It's really convenient how he doesn't know she ever left and yet he miraculously finds her at Guo Mama's house immediately after she returns, but this is a YA text after all.
Ignoring Guo Mama's insistence that they can't be together, he finds Meili on the floor of the shower, covered in the evidence of Nick's assault. He diverts his gaze, covers her in a robe and carries her to bed, where she finally tells him what she has been hiding for so long and falls asleep in his arms. If it weren't a story peppered with human trafficking, assault and the threat of deportation, it would be the moment that every woman has ever dreamed of.
Guo Mama explains to Marcus that it is not safe for Meili to remain in San Francisco but that she has a cousin in Seattle with a cottage, conveniently big enough for two, and that he could go with her. He runs home to collect his things and is immediately cornered by his father in full-on police mode, who threatens to arrest him, pumps him full of questions about Meili and reveals that he has been involved in a 4 year investigation about Nick. Thanks to Meili's anonymous tip, he has now been arrested for sex trafficking. He takes Marcus home, making him promise not to leave the house and returns to the station, rapping up the story line with far less information than was needed.
Given that this is a YA novel and there is nothing stronger than a teenage romance, Marcus ignores his father's wishes and rides his motorbike over to Meili, riding off into the sunset in a way that can only exist in the romantic fiction. The story ends, Meili escapes, and I didn't get the epilogue I so desperately craved.
Seriously, the temptation to write my own fanfic for this one is strong.
As I said, this novel broke me. As much of a crier as I am, I rarely cry over books, preferring to save my tears for my own pity parties. I fully expected this text to be the stereotypical sports superstar meets shy nerd romance, with only a small altercation around 75% of the way through, threatening to keep them apart, but I was wrong. This novel was brutal, beautiful, and although I would have preferred to learn more about Meili's family and their immigration to America, the main plot was thoroughly fleshed out. It's a short text, less than 300 pages and, I can understand why the authors chose not to add more to these secondary and tertiary plot lines. Would I recommend it? Yes. Would I recommend reading it when you're in a good mood? Yes. But would I recommend reading it without a box of tissues to hand?
Hell fucking no.
xXx
Find The Other Side of Together and it's sequel The Other Side of Apart here:
