As a teenager, I chose MIT because I wanted to be around other kids who loved math and science. Soon, I found myself in a place where classmates were raising millions for their startups or building moonshot projects that might change the world as we knew it. At one point, I ended up at a yacht party funded by venture capitalists. The music was so loud. I couldn’t help but wonder, how did I even get here?
So I wrote a novel trying to answer that question.
Here’s how my publisher, Simon & Schuster, describes the book:
“It’s not often we get a book set at a coding camp! Char’s ambition and her hunger to make her dreams into reality will resonate with all readers, both tech-savvy and tech-challenged.”
“Debut author Wang’s blunt yet relatable rendering of Char’s small-town life makes for an easy-to-root-for protagonist. Throughout the teen’s varied conflicts, frank language attentively outlines IRL issues faced by aspiring tech professionals—particularly by people of color, women, and immigrants—as they struggle to enter the contemporary workforce.”
And here’s how Publishers Weekly reviewed it:
You Had Me at Hello World
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Jenny Han meets Silicon Valley in this drama-packed debut young adult novel about a Chinese American teen who navigates a high-stakes coding competition, sabotage, and first love when she’s invited to a summer hackathon at MIT.
Sixteen-year-old Charise “Char” Tang is desperate to ditch her dead-end small town. So when she’s invited to a highly selective hackathon at MIT, she seizes the opportunity to jet across the country, spend the summer building an app, and maybe even snag the top prize—a golden ticket to a new life.
When she arrives, she teams up with Khoi Astor, coding wunderkind and creator of last year’s biggest mobile game. Khoi, who has soft eyes and a gentle smile. Khoi, who can make anyone laugh. Khoi, who is easy to fall for…and already dating her camp roommate. If only Char could reprogram her heart to forget about him.
As the competition heats up, so do things between Char and her teammate. But sabotage lurks around every corner, and she soon discovers that the glitzy tech world has a dark, dangerous underbelly.