If You Could See the Sun

By: Ann Liang

Narrated by: Natalie Naudus

"Academic rivals portrayed to perfection… An all-time top favorite." —Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights and Our Violent Ends

"Utterly unique, thought-provoking, and wonderfully written." —Gloria Chao, author of American Panda and Rent a Boyfriend

In this genre-bending , speculative YA debut, a Chinese American girl monetizes her strange new invisibility powers by discovering and selling her wealthy classmates’ most scandalous secrets.

Alice Sun has always felt invisible at her elite Beijing international boarding school, where she’s the only scholarship student among China’s most rich and influential teens. But then she starts uncontrollably turning invisible—actually invisible.

When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power—she’ll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price.

But as the tasks escalate from petty scandals to actual crimes, Alice must decide if it’s worth losing her conscience—or even her life.

Oh my god

Do I need to explain the title… my new favorite book for sure— I can’t wait for Ann Liang’s next book 😭🫶

Sweet YA fiction

Enjoyed this wholesome story. It’s a light read with good narration. It held my interest.

Great story

Love the setting, the couple, and the complicated moral ally grey sympathetic motivations. The second to last chapter needed more adults though maybe

My first 2 stars read of 2025...

My first 2 stars read of 2025... I am sad because I was looking forward to reading this book for a few years now. But alas.

The cover is absolutely stunning and I thought this premise promised a lot of potential for reflection, emotional turmoil and character growth as well as discussion about privilege.

However, MC keeps doing exponentially worse and worse things (which I get is the point), but she barely feels any remorse about it. Plus she hates her fellow classmates, who are, coincidentally, not really bad kids, it turns out that, instead, *she* is the mean one and a bully. Everything broke for me when a certain decision was made by the protagonist.
At least, if she was being shown to us as a morally grey character, I would have a somewhat easier time with it, but the way I am reading it, the author wants us to see her as a good and nice person. And in the end, the protagonist doesn't have any consequences for her actions. Not really. If anything, she gets a pat on her head and an opportunity for a shining future. Needless to say, I am not trusting this author any more.

Another problem that I had with this is that at certain times, Henry feels like he's somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but at other times he feels like he's the best one to read the room. Which felt inconsistent to me. But that inconsistency pales in comparison to the problems I have with the MC.

I would have probably dnf-ed it, but the audio narrator - Natalie Naudus - is amazing and I only finished it because of her narration. But it's certainly my worst read of the year so far 😳