Colleen Mondor Reviews The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee by Ellen Oh
The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee, Ellen Oh (Crown 978-0-593-12594-6, $19.99, hc, 295pp) January 2024. Cover by Audrey Mok.
In Ellen Oh’s The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee, the title character has a big problem: She does not want to pursue the life her father has mapped out for her. High school senior Mina is an artist and desperate to follow in her deceased mother’s footsteps and attend art school. Her father, still grieving his wife, cannot bear to look at her artwork and is determined that his daughter pursue a “safer” profession (i.e. doctor, lawyer, etc.). Mina secretly works on a webcomic, hoping it can gain enough of a following to persuade her father to give her dream a chance. The problem is that the rest of the world has barely noticed her slice-of-life ruminations about a typical high school. Even her two best friends, her only faithful readers, tell her she needs to add some excitement and romance (even, perish the thought, a love triangle!). One night, furious over the latest round of parental pressure, Mina throws some massive twists into the lives of her characters. The surprise for her comes during a subsequent lightning storm when something involving the multiverse (and maybe Back to the Future) sends her into her comic. That would be rough enough, except Mina finds out her recent changes have wreaked havoc on the lives of very real people who apparently live there and she, in essence, has become the supervillain in an innocent world.
Let’s get the easy part out of the way; The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee is a lot of fun! Mina will be easy for teens to identify with, and as the gulf between father and daughter widens, readers will sympathize with their enormous grief. All of the teens, from the sweet to the dangerous, are compelling, and Mina’s frustration as she realizes the cascade of webcomic tropes she has unleashed upon them (she is now part of a love triangle!) is both hilarious and poignant. The big twist comes with Jin, her love interest, and his unexpected real life backstory with Mina. Jin is the reason that as much as Mina wants to get home, she also wants to stay. Fortunately she finds a wise mentor (another trope!) to help guide her through the mess and figure out what she can do to save everyone before it’s too late.
Ellen Oh doesn’t waste a lot of time worrying about how Mina’s “worlds” have collided, and that’s fine; the appeal of this novel is far more in how Mina deals with everything than how she gets there. Oh will give webcomic fans reason to smile, as even her digs (that love triangle thing) are done with a wink and grin and Mina stays true to her love for the art form throughout. Mostly however, as much as The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee is a fantasy, it is the dramatic elements that still stay with readers. In the midst of some sudden superpowers and a murderous villain (not Mina – the comic bad guy), it’s still senior year and everyone is struggling to find their way to who they want to be. How Mina gets to her personal revelation, and saves the day, (of course!) makes for the best kind of summertime reading.
This review and more like it in the June 2024 issue of Locus.
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