Ann Liang, I am not Jessica Chen, HarperCollins Publishers, January 2025, 320 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781038900388
This is a lesson in be careful what you wish for. Jenna Chen often wishes she could be her cousin, Jessica. Jessica appears to be good at everything and her parents, unlike Jenna’s, seem to have everything. They have a bigger house, better jobs, better cars and a daughter about whom they can boast. As they are the same age, Jenna always feels she is in competition with Jessica and that her parent would be much prouder of her if she was more like Jessica.
One day, quite mysteriously, Jessica disappears and Jenna becomes her. However, things don’t work out quite as Jenna hopes. She struggles with the different lessons she now has to take. She is artistic and creative, more inclined to the humanities subjects. Jessica, on the other hand, studies STEM subjects and seems to have chosen the most difficult ones too. Jenna finds she seems to be gradually erased from everyone’s memories, a frightening prospect. And, even though she enjoys the luxury of Jessica’s house and clothes at first, she comes to miss the warmth of her own home, where her mother cooks and there is affection and noise. In Jessica’s house, meals are delivered, she is often home by herself and the house is quiet. As she lives longer as Jessica, she comes to appreciate what she had in her own family and misses some of the things she thought she wanted to get away from.
These contrasts provide an exploration of what it is to be a family. Is it just the relationships or is the interactions part of what makes the whole? Identity is also a strong theme as Jenna takes on that of Jessica but still feels, deep down, that she is Jenna with Jenna’s personality, skills and dreams. She comes too, to develop a stronger sense of her own self-worth the longer she is acting as Jessica. With this, comes an understanding of belonging and how important it is to feel that you really connect to a group, to friends, to family.
Jenna is also shocked to find that Jessica herself is not all she seems. Jenna, as Jessica, receives a string of messages that she doesn’t understand until she is confronted by a classmate who reveals a shocking act of Jessica’s that has resulted in Jessica being accepted into Harvard at the other girl’s expense. Is there any way this breach of integrity can be righted?
Gradually Jenna realises she wants to return to her own life and she tries to reconstruct exactly how she came to swap identities. She is helped in this by her friend Aaron, with whom, as Jenna, she had a budding romance, and even by Jessica herself.
This is a complex and intriguing story, with strong characterisation, and multiple themes to ponder and discuss.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
