Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Girls on the Line
    Unavailable
    Girls on the Line
    Unavailable
    Girls on the Line
    Ebook237 pages3 hours

    Girls on the Line

    By Jennie Liu

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A powerful, dual-narrative coming-of-age story set in 2009 China.

    Luli has just turned sixteen and finally aged out of the orphanage where she's spent the last eight years. Her friend Yun has promised to help her get work.

    Yun loves the independence that her factory job brings her. For the first time in her life she has her own money and can get the things she wants: nice clothes, a cell phone . . . and Yong, her new boyfriend.

    There are rumors about Yong, though. Some people say he's a bride trafficker: romancing young women only to kidnap them and sell them off to bachelors in the countryside. Yun doesn't believe it. But then she discovers she's pregnant—the same day she gets fired from her job. If she can't scrape together enough money to terminate the pregnancy, she'll face a huge fine for having an unauthorized child.

    Luli wants to help her friend, but she's worried about what Yong might do . . . especially when Yun disappears.

    "[E]xplores a moment of contemporary history and a culture that is underrepresented in YA realistic fiction."—starred, School Library Journal

    "Both poignant and agonizing, Girls on the Line is a must read."—starred, Foreword Reviews

    "An affecting and original thrill ride." Kirkus Reviews

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLerner Publishing
    Release dateNov 1, 2018
    ISBN9781541530706
    Unavailable
    Girls on the Line
    Author

    Jennie Liu

    Jennie Liu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She has been fascinated by the attitudes, social policies, and changes in China each time she visits. Her young adult novels have won honors including a Freeman Book Award Honorable Mention and an In the Margins: Best Books for Teens award. She lives in North Carolina with her family.

    Read more from Jennie Liu

    Related to Girls on the Line

    Related ebooks

    YA Historical For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Other Child

      Dec 1, 2018

      The Other Child
      9 min read

    • Article

      “Wicked Fox” Is An Engrossing – If Convoluted – YA Fantasy

      Aug 22, 2019

      Kat Cho’s debut novel “Wicked Fox” is a little complicated, but the poignantly rendered family relationships and fantasy drama are worth the ride.

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Heroine for Our Time

      Oct 7, 2017

      JENNIFER EGAN JOINED THE WHO’S WHO of American letters in 2011 when she won a Pulitzer for A Visit From the Goon Squad, an interlinked-story-collection-as-novel that bucked more than a few conventions. Her new novel Manhattan Beach is more convention

      1 min read

    • Article

      Estella’s Fate

      May 17, 2023

      Estella’s Fate
      7 min read

    • Article

      Okay Rina Sawayama

      Nov 22, 2021

      Okay Rina Sawayama
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Waiting Room

      May 10, 2023

      Overhead the lights hummed. They were bright and fluorescent, and they reflected off the clean white walls of the waiting room to produce the unsettling effect of being folded away inside a sheet of paper. Cross-legged on the floor by the door, the b

      9 min read

    • Article

      The In-betweeners

      Nov 12, 2019

      Two years ago, during the Writing Popular Fiction MFA winter residency at Seton Hill University, a discussion broke out amongst my students in a critique workshop geared toward young adult (YA) writers: They didn’t think YA novels were really written

      6 min read

    • Article

      How High We Go In The Dark

      Dec 29, 2021

      ▸ RELEASED 18 JANUARY 304 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Sequoia Nagamatsu ▸ Publisher Bloomsbury There are surprisingly few SF stories about death. Sure, many books and films kill off characters. But only a handful – like Tarkovsky’s Solaris, or Te

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Perfect Daughter

      Jul 10, 2021

      Standing in a handstand, Jane arched her back and lowered her feet towards the head. Scorpion pose. She saw herself in the mirror, balancing in this challenging position. It was close to perfection… And she felt sick at the sight of it. From the loud

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Wolf On The Bus

      May 10, 2021

      Exhaustion flooded my body, leaving a dull ache pulsating just behind my eyes. With my right thumb and index finger, I squeezed the bridge of my nose, exhaling deeply, trying to soothe the pain. This tactic worked temporarily; at least until the bus

      17 min read

    • Article

      A Wolf On The Bus

      Apr 10, 2024

      Exhaustion flooded my body, leaving a dull ache pulsating just behind my eyes. With my right thumb and index finger, I squeezed the bridge of my nose, exhaling deeply, trying to soothe the pain. This tactic worked temporarily, at least until the bus

      17 min read

    • Article

      Come with Me

      Dec 1, 2022

      Come with Me
      12 min read

    • Article

      Finding Peace—and Briefly, Freedom—at My Grandfather’s Funeral

      Oct 11, 2019

      “Saying goodbye with the people who loved him—and me—I remember that I am not the tomb that imprisons me.”

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Straw Hat

      Aug 2, 2018

      The Straw Hat
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Space Between Us

      Oct 9, 2019

      The Space Between Us
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Portrait

      Mar 1, 2018

      I WAS BORN almost completely deaf, and by the time I was seven I had already become a prisoner to my education. In the morning, I had speech therapy and tutoring with Mr. Bishop. We sat at my family’s long dining-room table, which was always covered

      9 min read

    Reviews for Girls on the Line

    3/5

    8 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      The story held my attention, but the writing style wasn't my favorite. The ending was abrupt and unsatisfying, but the characters have stayed with me weeks after I finished reading. I just don't know with this one.
    • 3/5
      Many thanks to Netgalley, Carolrodha and Jennie Liu for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are 100% my own and independent of receiving an advanced copy.Luli has turned 16 and is turned out from the orphanage where she spent most of her life. She is off to the big city to meet up with her friend, Yun, who left the year before. Yun has a factory job and has promised to help Luli find a job and get settled. Although it is backbreaking work, it is better than staying to work at the orphanage looking after the babies. Luli can see how much Yun has changed in the one year since she left the orphanage. She has a stylish haircut, new clothes, disposable cash and a boyfriend. Luli learns that Yun’s boyfriend is bad news. He might be involved in trafficking women. Luli tried to warn her friend, but Yun doesn’t believe it. Soon Yun finds herself pregnant, alone and discovers that what people have been saying about her boyfriend is true. But she needs him to help pay for the abortion. The one child policy and the fact that she is unmarried, will make it impossible for her to keep the baby. At 16, she doesn’t want the responsibility. She is only just starting her life. Luli want to help her friend but how can she support her terminating the pregnancy or even worse, having the baby and giving it to the orphanage. The book explores the topics of family, friendship, coming of age, love, unwanted pregnancy and the One Child Policy in China through though the lives of these tow young girls as they navigate life on their own.I have mixed feelings towards this novel. I thought that it did an amazing job of illustrating how difficult life can be in China. Being an orphan is tough. Having to support yourself at 16 is even harder. Getting pregnant at 16, with no family and having to make very tough decisions seems almost impossible. But when you explore these issues through the lens of another culture it really is eye opening. I had heard about the One Child policy, but I never considered what that entailed. I was very aware of the fact that girls were being abandoned, or worse killed, in order to have the “preferred” sons. I was also aware that it created a gender imbalance that has had huge ramifications for that society. I did not realize that if you did have a secret second baby they would not be considered a citizen and therefore wouldn’t be able to go to school or find a job. I was mildly aware of the deplorable conditions in the orphanages, but Liu brings to light so many issues that I hadn’t considered. She also did a great job of examining difficult issues through the lens of another culture. There were so many things in the story that made me feel if you were unlucky enough to be a pregnant orphan at 16, you were still way better off to be in North America. The. backbreaking work in the factory, being fined for having a baby that would take you most of your life to pay back, the prejudices against anyone outside of the norm makes for a very oppressive life. There were a few things that didn’t work for me. One was the alternating chapters between Yun and Luli. This didn’t work for me at all. I find it disrupted the story and the transitions were awkward, even jarring, at times. The biggest downside for me was the language. I’m not sure why but the best way I can explain it is that it seemed too simplistic. It almost felt like a translation. I don’t think it did the story any justice. It kept bothering me as I was reading and it took me out of the story. I’m not referring to the dialogue between characters. However, the structure was sound and the events flowed nicely. Overall, I think this was an important story to tell and I would recommend it to others.