Ann Liang's trading-places young adult story allows faulted, imperfect Jenna Chen to live as her perfect, beautiful, Harvard-bound cousin Jessica for a time, pressure and expectations and all--before having to choose which existence she wants to live out forever.
In Ann Liang's newest young-adult novel, Jenna Chen has always been a disappointment, at least when compared to her perfect cousin Jessica.
Jessica is a top student, so beautiful that others stop to openly admire her, and the most high-achieving and most beloved student at a cutthroat high school. Jessica and Jenna's immigrant parents hope that their daughters will exceed all expectations, and Jessica always seems to. Meanwhile Jenna is artistic and average, and her desperate wish is to be Jessica.
When Jenna finds out she didn't get into Harvard (or any Ivy League schools--side note: her strong but not remarkable school performance doesn't seem to align with expectations around this) and suffers through a celebratory dinner for her cousin, who is Harvard bound, it feels like the last straw. Even Jenna's art--which is her escape and her gift--drives her crazy, and she destroys her self portrait in a fit of disappointment.
When she wakes, she finds to her confusion and elation that her wish has come true: Jenna has somehow taken over Jessica's body and life. But while she looks like Jessica, she has retained her own average academic abilities and her own thoughts and personality--and unlike Jessica, Jenna is not desperate to please others. She quickly realizes that being a top student at a competitive school and having others distracted by your good looks, desperate for your attention, and jealous of your achievements doesn't make for as joyful a life as Jenna would have thought. And while Jenna muddles through Jessica's carefully scripted and scheduled life, everyone seems to be forgetting that Jenna herself ever existed.
Then a boy from Jenna and Jessica's past returns to town, and he seems to realize "Jessica" is not herself--but is his interest in Jenna or in Jessica?
I really liked the revelations (which come through reading Jessica's diary, eek) regarding Jessica's frustrations and fears, as well as Jenna's acceptance of her own strengths. Because Jessica's body is usurped so quickly in the story, we don't get a chance until the very end to really grasp the cousins' dynamic together. Jessica isn't shown to be a complex, surprising character--more of a high-achieving, gorgeous robot.
And I wanted more conflict and more self-realization from Jenna than the clarification that she doesn't want to abandon her life forever (or abandon Jessica's soul; the essence of Jessica seems to disappear altogether during Jenna's body-swapping) by living as Jessica. Yes, the boy likes Jenna for Jenna, and they're adorable together--although the barrier to their being together left me wishing for more plausibility.
I found myself wanting to understand more about what shifted in Jenna's thinking about all of her long-held, outrageous aspirations, her parents' pressures on her (I found myself wanting more clarification around their constant, long-term, destructive comparisons of Jenna to Jessica), and her understanding of fulfillment and happiness for her.
But I love love love a trading-places premise and how it allows peeks behind the scenes at another life and the literal walking in the shoes of another person. And I love Ann Liang's writing and her books--I'll read every one.
I received a prepublication edition of I Am Not Jessica Chen courtesy of HarperCollins Children's Books and NetGalley.
More Ann Liang love
I fell in love with Ann Liang's fake-dating young adult novel This Time It's Real, read it in one rainy afternoon, and included it in my Greedy Reading Lists Six of My Favorite Light Fiction Reads from the Past Year, Six Rom-Coms Perfect for Summer Reading, and My Bossy Favorite Reads of Summer the year I read it.
You can find my review of Liang's great young-adult rom-com I Hope This Doesn't Find You here and my review of Liang's young-adult historical fiction fantasy novel A Song to Drown Rivers here.