Review: This Place is Still Beautiful by Xixi Tian

Two sisters. A shocking racist incident. The summer that will change both of their lives forever.

Despite having had near-identical upbringings, sisters Annalie and Margaret agree on only one thing: that they have nothing in common. Nineteen-year-old Margaret is driven, ambitious, and keenly aware of social justice issues. She couldn’t wait to leave their oppressive small-town home and take flight in New York. Meanwhile sweet, popular, seventeen-year-old Annalie couldn’t think of anything worse – she loves their town, and feels safe coasting along in its confines.

That is, until she arrives home one day to find a gut-punching racial slur painted on their garage door.

Outraged, Margaret flies home, expecting to find her family up in arms. Instead, she’s amazed to hear they want to forget about it. Their mom is worried about what it might stir up, and Annalie just wants to have a ‘normal’ summer – which Margaret is determined to ruin, apparently.

Back under each other’s skins, things between Margaret and Annalie get steadily worse – and not even the distraction of first love (for Annalie), or lost love (for Margaret) can bring them together.

Until finally, a crushing secret threatens to tear them apart forever. 

• Title: The Place is Still Beautiful
• Author:  Xixi Tian
• Publisher: Balzer & Bray/Harperteen
• Publication Date: June 7th, 2022
• Genre: Contemporary 
• Targeted Age Range: YA
• Content Warnings: mentions of divorce (past), hate crime, police, racism, parental abandonment (past), c slur, sexism, mentions of sex, gaslighting, mentions of cancer (brain tumor), Harry Potter reference, underage drinking, colorisim
• Rating: ★★★★

When seventeen-year-old Annalie Flanagan comes home one summer afternoon to see an anti-Asian slur painted on her garage door, the easy and carefree summer she has planned goes up in smoke. Paralyzed by shock, she does the only thing she can think of — she calls her older sister in New York. Nineteen-year-old Margaret immediately hops on a plane back to their small Midwestern town and is ready to take action. She expects to see her mother and sister just as angry as she is, and instead, is amazed that the two of them seemingly just want to move on and pretend like it never happened. As the summer goes on, Annalie and Margaret have conflicting opinions on how the situation is to be handled, but one thing is clear, no matter how things pan out, their lives will never be the same.

Xixi Tian’s debut novel The Place is Still Beautiful talks about racism, colorism, and prejudice in an unflinchingly real and raw way. There’s never an easy time to read a book that centers around the aftermath of a hate crime, but after the uptick in hate crimes against Asian Americans (and the Asian population in general) over the last two plus years, it was especially difficult. 

In my opinion, one of the things that makes a good book is its ability to take you through a wide range of emotions, and This Place is Still Beautiful does that. There were sweet moments that had me smiling from ear to ear, heartbreaking moments that had me tearing up, and moments where I felt so much anger and rage that I could’ve made the world burn.

“They think me talking publicly about racism is more offensive than an actual hate crime. People would rather I just kept my mouth shut and looked sad. Then they could white knight in and express sympathy without feeling uncomfortable”

I loved that the book alternated between Annalie and Margaret’s points of view as the two are so different and want to handle the situation in completely opposite ways. I definitely found myself sympathizing with Margaret more, as I think that I would handle the situation very similarly. I appreciated how vocal Margaret was when it came to racial justice and that she didn’t back down even when people tried to gaslight her into believing that she was “making a big deal out of a simple joke” or “overreacting”, which is always what people will say when someone calls out racism. Margaret wants to face the situation head on, whereas Annalie dissociates from it. 

The chapters from Annalie’s point of view were difficult to get through simply because she didn’t want to deal with the situation at all. Annalie loves their town — and unlike Margaret, she’s always felt safe there. Because of that, she doesn’t want to believe that someone would intentionally go out of their way to paint such a vindictive and hateful thing on their door. I understand not wanting to believe that someone you know could be capable of doing something so terrible, but I had such a hard time not getting annoyed with her reluctance to acknowledge the racism in the town.

However, something that is important to point out, and I think plays a huge part in how the girls handle the situation, is the fact that Margret takes after their Chinese mother, and Annalie takes after their white father. The difference in Margret and Annalie’s appearance has had a huge impact on each of them mentally, emotionally and socially. Margaret has always been the target of more racist commentary, while Annalie has been told that she “doesn’t look Asian” and has had people assume that her mother is her nanny. At one point, Annalie is reflecting on how as a kid, she thought it was a compliment that people would tell her she didn’t look half Chinese, and then as a teenager realized just how messed up that is. Unfortunately, that is a regular occurrence for many Asian-Americans, myself included. I think hearing that for her entire life influenced Annalie’s choices. When you’re told from a young age that you aren’t “enough” for part of your heritage, it makes you feel as though you cannot claim that part of you. I got the feeling that because of this, it made Annalie feel as though it wasn’t her place to get upset or fight back because she’s not “Asian enough”.

Annalie and Margaret felt so real, and I think that’s vital in such a character driven story. I know people like Margaret, and I know people like Annalie. It made it easy to understand, sympathize, and even get annoyed with them because of how relatable they felt. I really appreciated that, and I was especially fond of the progress that they made as the story went on and how the ending left room for more growth. 

In a book like this, romance subplots tend to annoy me, as they don’t usually have any bearing on the actual plot, in this case, the romantic subplots were tightly woven with the story being told. I thought that Margaret and Rajiv were really cute — I love second chance romance, and thought that the way they were able to easily fall back into their dynamic was really sweet. It was also important to the story as it showed the prejudices that Margaret’s mother had towards Rajiv (who is Indian), as I think that there is a misconception that just because you’re a person of color, it means that you can’t be racist. That also influenced Margaret’s desire to leave immediately after high school, as well as her reluctance to return.

Then there’s Annalie and Thom’s relationship — I can’t go too far into detail about their relationship without getting into spoilery territory, but I think that Thom and their relationship was a great representation of how Annalie had viewed her home town prior to the hate crime. Thom was the golden boy of their town; your typical sweet talking, charming, and likable “all-american” boy, and then as they start dating she realizes that he wasn’t everything that she had thought he was. 

Although not perfect, This Place is Still Beautiful made me feel deeply and I think it’s a very solid debut novel. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Tian writes next!

Please note that while I am Asian-American, I am not Chinese-American. I will be updating this post with ownvoice reviews as I find them. 

Links for The Place is Still Beautiful: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound