Twelve-year-old Chloe Cho is the only Asian kid in the small town of Primrose Heights. At the start of seventh grade, she's excited to learn that her new social studies teacher, Ms. Lee, is Korean like she is. Her first assignment of the year is to write a story about her family history, told by a family member, but Chloe's parents refuse to talk about any aspect of their life in Korea. Chloe is determined to find out why they're so evasive.
Unidentified Suburban Object contains examples of:
- Armor-Piercing Question: The Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure comes from Chloe accusing Shelley of only hanging out with her because of a Foreign Culture Fetish. Chloe's parents ask if she thinks Shelley understood Korean culture when they were three and met in preschool. They point out that Shelley's obsession with Korean culture likely grew because of her friendship with Chloe rather than vice versa.
- Asian and Nerdy: Chloe is one of the best students in her school, as well as a violinist who's made first chair in the school orchestra for the last three years. Adam Wheeler, her only real competition, complains that she only beats him because Asians have a violin-playing gene, which infuriates her.
- The B Grade: Chloe's teachers have given her nothing but As since kindergarten, with the exception of her sixth grade English teacher, Mr. Dombrowski, who gave her a B- on a personal narrative essay. Chloe is still furious at him.
- Change the Uncomfortable Subject: When Chloe tries to talk to her parents about Korea, they distract her by buying her an expensive new violin, then a bow, supposedly because her mom got a bonus. It works so well that Chloe forgets about the assignment until the day before it's due.
- Gene Hunting: Chloe submits a sample of her DNA to GeneGenie in the hopes of finding relatives in Korea she can ask about her parents' lives. When she finds out she's an alien, she assumes she isn't related to anyone else on earth besides her parents, until she gets a letter from the company saying she has a match in South Korea, meaning someone besides her parents escaped the planet and made it to Earth.
- Homeworld Evacuation: Chloe's parents are actually from a planet known to Earthlings as Tau Ceti Four, which was destroyed in some kind of solar event. Chloe's mom happened to be working in the astrophysics department of the equivalent of a university, so she and her husband were able to jump into an experimental spaceship and escape the planet that way. As far as they know, they're the only survivors.
- Human Aliens: Chloe and her parents' DNA is 99.999% identical to that of a normal human. There are only a few hard-to-notice differences, like some of the enzymes in their saliva.
- Innocently Insensitive: Lindsey Cripp has no filter and limited social skills, and tends to anger or upset people with her comments. She's never trying to be mean though, and always feels guilty whenever she sees that she's hurt anyone.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Chloe is so shocked to learn that her parents are from another planet that she starts forgetting to do school assignments and practice the violin, and even gets detention for talking back to the principal. This is so out of character for her that even the kids who don't like her are concerned.
- Sarcastic Confession: Adam beats out Chloe for first chair, to his amazement. He says, "You've always been the best violin player in school. What is going on with you?" Chloe says, "What's going on is that I found out my parents are aliens from another galaxy, which technically makes ME an alien from another galaxy! Does that explain it? Are you satisfied?" Adam says, "Whatever, Chloe. You don't have to be so sarcastic."
- Tantrum Throwing: After Chloe falls way behind on an assignment, she and her best friend Shelley Drake struggle to catch up. Overwhelmed with the huge amount of work in front of her, Chloe throws her pencil onto the desk so hard that it bounces, hits the wall, and falls behind the desk.
- They Would Cut You Up: Chloe's parents hide their alien heritage for fear that they would be the targets of constant harassment at best, or captured and imprisoned at worst. They originally settled in South Korea because that was where people looked the most like them, but their ignorance of Korean customs meant that they completely failed to blend in. So they moved to Primrose Heights, where no one would think their ignorance of American customs was unusual.
