3.21.2025 | Friday

Solving for the Unknown

Item: Solving for the Unknown
Rating: 5
Author: Kim

category: Book Reviews
tag(s): new adult
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title: Solving for the Unknown
author: Loan Le
series: Love Story #2
published: 3.4.2025
publisher: Simon & Schuster
genre(s): contemporary, romance
pages: 324
source: bought
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | BookBub | BookHype | Goodreads

rating:

| series rating:

the blurb

In this sweet, incredibly heartfelt companion to A Pho Love Story, Vietnamese Americans Viet and Evie juggle family expectations with their desire to forge their own path in between college classes and falling in love.

To his friends back home, Viet Ho is calm and collected and a lovable oddball who nurses an obsession with forensic science. He’s relieved to head off to UC Davis and escape from being in the middle of his bickering immigrant parents. Yet, on campus and with the school year unfolding at an overwhelming pace, Viet struggles to belong and to keep his depression hidden.

Evie Mai is a junior biology major and the eldest daughter who has never trod far off the beaten path. She has good grades, a solid group of friends, and a smart, ambitious boyfriend, who’s the son of a well-connected university board member. But their busy schedules, as well as their interests, no longer align. Determined to close the distance, she and her boyfriend both apply to a student-run clinic for underserved communities. But will that save or expose the gaps in their relationship?

When a clumsy accident brings Viet and Evie together, they bond over their shared hometown and similar history—and their orbits grow smaller as their friends collide. The more time they spend with each other and support each other, mentally and emotionally, the more their friendship shifts into something else.

A sweet, emotional slice-of-life story, Solving for the Unknown is about characters questioning the paths they have taken and finding a new path that will lead them to their happiest selves.

a few notes

trigger warning: depression, divorce

POV: 3rd person; dual
keywords/phrases: family, mental health, self-discovery, friendship, slow burn
tropes: friends to lovers, found family
spice: 0🔥
language: 1🤬

read this if… you love own-voices stories, steeped with culture, and interesting characters and realistic storylines.

my review

note: Technically, this is a connected standalone to A Pho Love Story, but it does follow on the heels of that book.

Solving for the Unknown is told from the dual perspectives of Việt and Evie, both of who were also in A Pho Love Story. Although connected through Evie’s little sister Linh, it was a chance meeting at the college they both attended that became their meet-cute. The story was as much about friendship as it was about romance, with Evie drawing Việt into her circle of friends. Those friends formed a found family for all involved, which was beautiful and supportive and everything anyone could want in a friend group. They were truly there for each other in all the important ways.

The author didn’t shy away from difficult topics, either. Việt’s own family dynamic was difficult, affecting his mental health in ways he didn’t really understand at first. It was his friends’ support that helped open his eyes, that helped him find his way through it. His pain and suffering were palpable and heart-wrenching, but still surrounded by hope. And the author explored the difficulty of expectations, both cultural and familial. As an only child and eldest sister, these expectations weighed heavily in the people that Việt and Evie became, in how they approached the world. But while they used it in positive ways, there was a character whose own familial and cultural expectations manifested in ways that were far last positive.

The only downside I could possibly have with this book is the same as with A Pho Love Story. There is a fair bit of Vietnamese in the book, some of which is not always explained very clearly. I’m lucky that I speak enough of the language to be able to understand the majority of it, but it could be difficult for someone who does not speak it. However, I didn’t find any of it to be of such significance as to leave understanding of what was happening lacking.

About Loan Le

Loan Le is the youngest child of two Vietnamese immigrants hailing from Nha Trang. She holds an MFA degree in fiction from Fairfield University, also her undergraduate alma mater. A Pushcart Prize–nominated writer, her short stories have appeared in CRAFT Literary, Mud Season Review, and Angel City Review. Loan is an editor at Simon and Schuster’s Atria Books imprint and lives in Manhattan.

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