A Novel About an Art School

Josh Sullivan can't accept that his father remarried at lightning speed, just one year after his mother died.

He hates his father, and by association, he has come to hate his stepmother too, a foreign woman who will stop at nothing to sort out her immigration status.

To make his stance perfectly clear, he always refers to her with open hostility as "that woman."

But one day, Josh realizes with a shock:

He might have fallen for "that woman's" daughter.

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When Lin Peixin first met Josh, she could tell he didn't like her very much.

From Josh's perspective, that was understandable:

She was his stepmother's daughter, a "sister" with no blood relation to him whatsoever. Not only had she moved into the Sullivan home, but his dad had also shelled out a huge sum of money to pay her exorbitant international student tuition.

And they went to the same university.

At least the campus was big, so they weren't likely to run into each other.

In theory, anyway.

After the semester began, Lin Peixin kept running into Josh in the most unexpected places:

Outside the library restroom, at a pho shop, at a freshman party...

She even ran into him after the first movie she'd ever gone to see with a guy.

Lin Peixin gradually began to suspect something was off: were they just destined to keep crossing paths, or was her new stepbrother actually a stalker?

*An international romance, set at a fictional American university. The family has been reconstituted, but the leads are not related by blood. They have no intimate relationship while their parents are married.

Theme: Overcoming prejudice.