At long last, Ed Lin’s debut YA novel David Tung Can’t Have a Girlfriend Until He Gets Into an Ivy League College is available for pre-order, and will be published this September. UPDATE: David Tung will now be officially published in October, but available to pre-orders by September!

In these times, when the day-to-day challenges and heartbreaks of high school seem like a far-off world, come take some solace in this book, whether you’re about to start high school or left it behind long ago.

David Tung is a Chinese American high-school student who works in his family’s restaurant, competes for top rank at his upscale, Asian-majority, suburban New Jersey high school, and hangs with his “real” friends at weekend Chinese school in NYC’s working-class Chinatown. When popular girl Christina Tau asks David to the high school Dame’s Dance, David’s tightly regimented life gets thrown into a tailspin–especially when he realizes that he actually has feelings for Betty, the smartest girl at Chinese school. But, as his mother reminds him, he’s not allowed to have a girlfriend! Should he defy his mother and go to the dance, or defy Cristina’s wishes and spend Saturday night studying for the MCATs? Ed Lin’s YA-debut explores coming-of-age in the Asian diaspora while navigating relationships through race, class, young love, and the confusing expectations of immigrant parental pressure.