Roll call for YA book lovers! Our 2025 wouldn’t be right if we didn’t start it out with a YA romance. Today, we have Stefany Valentine’s lovely YA debut, First Love Language.
First Love Language follows Taiwanese American Catie Carlson, as she tries to learn about her birth mother and reconnect with her Taiwanese roots. Her new coworker Toby offers his help in teaching her Mandarin in exchange for dating advice on how to ask out his first and only crush. Sounds easy enough, until Catie has to lie about having dating experience in the first place.
We read First Love Language in less than a day, so what more can we say? Here are three things we love about Stefany Valentine’s First Love Language!
Book Overview: First Love Language
Content warnings: mentions of parent death, sibling death, racism, and homophobia
Summary: Taiwanese American Catie Carlson has never fit in with her white family. As much as she loves her stepmom and stepsister, she yearns to understand more about her culture and find her biological mother.
So Catie is shocked when an opportunity comes knocking on her door: Her summer spa coworker, Toby, says he’ll teach her Mandarin. In exchange, she needs to teach him how to date so he can finally work up the courage to ask out his crush. The only problem is that Catie doesn’t actually have any dating experience. But she can fake it.
With her late father’s copy of The Five Love Languages and all his annotated notes, Catie becomes the perfect dating coach. Or so she thinks. As she gets dangerously close to Toby and to finding out what really happened to her biological mom, she realizes that learning the language of love might be tougher than she thought.
Stefany Valentine’s debut novel is both a fresh, fun romance as well as a profound, luminous story about grief, family, transracial adoption, and what it means to truly follow your heart.
Catie’s Impromptu Date Ideas
Despite the fact that Catie has no dating experience, she comes up with some brilliant practice date ideas. (Let her cook!) And though Catie has to keep up the lie that she has a long-distance boyfriend, there’s no denying the natural chemistry between her and Toby. We love the date inspired by acts of service where the two of them cooked a dish for the other. And the date inspired by the love language of quality time. Catie just improvises so well!
Their Found Family
Another thing we love about First Love Language is the found family that Catie and her sister Mavis create. Moving from San Diego to Salt Lake City was such a sudden and unwanted change for both of them. They didn’t think it would be permanent, either. But with the help of Toby and the Pride Center, the Carlson’s find a community they can call home. They find friends and romantic partners they can spend the summer with and beyond. And we’re living for it!
Everything About Toby
Is it too on the nose to love the love interest so much? Toby is such a green flag, from the way he doesn’t want to go on practice dates out of respect for Catie’s supposed relationship to the way he encourages her in speaking Mandarin. He’s an outgoing guy and secure in his masculinity, despite working in a predominantly female field like cosmetology. We need a guy like Toby, especially when he has some “loser” qualities (and we mean that with so much affection).
Stefany Valentine’s First Love Language reminds us how important it is to find your community, connect with your culture, and be your best self. We can’t recommend it enough!
First Love Language by Stefany Valentine is out January 14th, and you can preorder a copy of it here!
What do you think about Stefany Valentine’s YA debut, First Love Language? What’s your love language? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
Want to hear some of our audiobook recommendations? Here’s the latest!
3 Comments
Pingback: Book Review: A Curse For The Homesick By Laura Brooke Robson - The Honey POP
Pingback: Fall In Love With Something Like Fate By Amy Lea - The Honey POP
Pingback: THP’s Spring Book Roundup For A Fresh Start To Your TBR! - The Honey POP