The Red Car to Hollywood
By: Jennie Liu
Genre: YA, Historical Fiction
Number of Pages: 256
Published: March 4, 2025 (1st Published January 1, 2025)
Publisher: Carolrhoda Lab
Dates Read: February 18, 2026 - February 25, 2026
Format: Hardcover		ISBN: 9781728493213

Trigger Warnings: racism, sexism, sexual assault

Sixteen-year-old Ruby Chan considers herself a modern, independent American teenager. But when her secret relationship with a white boy implodes and is revealed to her very traditional Chinese parents, her life gets locked and chained. Her parents hire a matchmaker to find her a Chinese husband and her dad will also look for a husband on his business trip to China. 

Meanwhile, Ruby meets the nineteen-year-old film star, Anna May Wong at her family’s laundromat and the girls quickly strike up a friendship. Anna May defies Chinese convention by working as an actress on the silver screen and she scoffs at others’ assumptions about her. If she can forge her own path, so can Ruby.

I could really tell the research Jennie Liu had done with this novel and appreciated how she showed the issues Chinese teens dealt with in the 1920s. This isn’t a time in history I read too often so it was a learning experience for me as well. I have read about a few laws that were put into place in America around the 1940s but was not aware some of them were put into place decades before. 

I appreciated Ruby’s growth and determination about forging her own path but still trying to be somewhat respectful. Though the story ends on a high note, it’s not wrapped up sweet and nicely and leaves room for the reader to imagine Ruby’s story beyond the time we read with her. 

Overall, this is an informative, coming of age, historical fiction about growing up as a female Chinese American in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1920 that any historical reader would enjoy.

*Thank you Carolrhoda Lab and LibraryThing for a copy of this title in exchange for an honest review