When You Wish Upon a Lantern (A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year)

A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Bank Street College Best Book of the Year

"As delectable as a mooncake." —Kirkus Reviews

Acclaimed author Gloria Chao creates real-world magic in this luminous romance about teens who devote themselves to granting other people's wishes but are too afraid to let themselves have their own hearts' desires—each other.

Liya and Kai had been best friends since they were little kids, but all that changed when a humiliating incident sparked the Biggest Misunderstanding of All Time—and they haven't spoken since.

Then Liya discovers her family's wishing-lantern store is struggling, and she decides to resume a tradition she had with her beloved late grandmother: secretly fulfilling the wishes people write on the lanterns they send into the sky. It may boost sales and save the store, but she can't do it alone . . . and Kai is the only one who cares enough to help.

While working on their covert missions, Liya and Kai rekindle their friendship—and maybe more. But when their feuding families and changing futures threaten to tear them apart again, can they find a way to make their own wishes come true?

Gloria Chao is a screenwriter and the award-winning author of American Panda, Our Wayward Fate, Rent a Boyfriend, When You Wish Upon a Lantern, Ex Marks the Spot, and the forthcoming The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club. She graduated from MIT, then became a dentist before realizing she'd rather spend her days in fictional characters' heads instead of real people's mouths. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the curling ice, where she and her husband are world-ranked in mixed doubles.

Visit her tea-and-book-filled world at GloriaChao.wordpress.com and find her on social media @GloriaCChao.