When You Wish upon a Lantern

In Gloria Chao's tender YA contemporary romance, seventeen-year-old Liya Huang is still grieving the grandmother who taught her that a wish written on a paper lantern deserves to come true. Six months after her grandma's death, Liya secretly carries on their tradition, tracking down the strangers who leave wishes at her family's Chicago Chinatown lantern store and quietly making them real.

When the store's finances begin to slip, Liya decides to grant every wish she can — a task far too large for one person. The one friend she trusts enough to ask is Kai Jiang, the boy she was inseparable from as a child before an awkward, humiliating moment drove them apart. Kai, missing her and wrestling with his own strained family, agrees to become her wish-granting partner.

As the two work through their community's hopes, the distance between them closes, and a broken friendship rekindles into first love. Warm, hopeful, and rooted in Chinese American tradition, food, and folklore, it's a story about grief, community, and the small acts of kindness that hold a neighborhood together.