Ex Marks the Spot

thank you to viking books for young readers and penguin teen for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

call me a nerd but i love a good puzzle. i often start and end my day doing them. so when you tell me a book if focused around different puzzles that were created by the main character’s late grandfather for an inheritance treasure hunt that brings her halfway across the world. count me in!

putting everything aside in the story besides the inheritance puzzle hunt, i think it was done pretty damn well. as much as i love puzzles, i know being a puzzle maker is a whole other ball game that does truly take some talent. so i absolutely commend gloria chao for making puzzles that the reader could probably have actually gone on themselves and tried to solve. and having our main character not speak/read mandarin it definitely allowed some hand-holding for the puzzles that needed translations, which definitely was an added bonus for probably many readers that also don’t know the language and it’s word-play nuances. puzzles aside, i would definitely agree with other reviewers that the actual hunt went a bit too well for how an real-world one may have gone. i love a good puzzle and i know that especially with sequential puzzles you’re bound to get stuck with far less progress than gemma and xander made. but i’ll give cut it out to them bering just very smart people.

as for the other aspects, i loved that this hunt allowed for gemma to become more in touch with her heritage and all that entailed. i do wish we had more interactions with the other TARPers and with the itinerary that would have been planned for them. but i understand that with the built-in time crunch it really was a pick and choose and gemma is not one to stray away from her plans. so unfortunately (but forunately) we were shown different sights of taiwain than what would probably have been expected. and of course was intentional to show her grandfather’s story. his story, which definitely represents a physical version of gemma’s missing heritage. i think rather than be a true grief story for gemma, since she was so disconnected from her extended family. it allowed her to become more comfortable with her taiwanese side of herself. through the landscapes, the people, and especially the food. i can appreciate what chao was executing.

while i think some aspects maybe wasn’t necessary (the love triangle) or were underdeveloped (her relationships with the other TARPers). i think this story executed it’s main goal, being a love letter to taiwan hidden behind a whimsy “high stakes” scavenger hunt. even if i couldn’t solve all the clues myself in the literal puzzles, it was obvious (to me at least) where her grandfather’s story was going. but i still appreciated the reveals anyways, especially the final one in the park. i’ll leave it at that. this was a cute romance, one perfect for puzzle lovers.