This post was updated Feb. 10

“I Am Not Jessica Chen” is a must-read for those intensely struggling with comparison.

“I Am Not Jessica Chen,” written by award-winning author Ann Liang and published Jan. 28, is a speculative fiction novel centered around the seemingly perfect titular character. Jessica is everything her cousin Jenna is not. She is undeniably intelligent, beloved by family, strikingly beautiful and her future is as bright as the stars. The novel begins when Jenna is rejected from Harvard and Jessica is accepted. While Jenna attempts to be supportive of her relative, she describes the experience as “as painful as swallowing glass.” With Liang’s outstanding storytelling throughout the novel, Jenna’s pain becomes the reader’s.

Soon after their family learns about Jessica’s exciting news and Jenna’s disheartening news, the two cousins make wishes on shooting stars. Jenna makes the wish that she could be Jessica Chen. The next morning, her wish comes true, defying all logic and science. Jenna quite literally becomes Jessica – with her perfect body, luxurious house, popular friends and the crushing pressure of being one of the best students at Havenwood Private Academy.

Liang excels at conveying the painful experience of constant comparison due to internal and external factors. While some readers may harshly criticize Jenna for being self-absorbed at the beginning of the novel, her struggles with comparison are more understandable given the drastically different treatment the cousins receive from others. Jenna recounts a time when a classmate outright said Jenna was the dollar-store version of Jessica. Jenna’s parents also add to her insecurities. After learning about her rejection from Harvard, they use Jessica’s success as proof that Jenna should succeed as well. Jenna’s despair feels warranted, especially because she worked diligently throughout her life only to be thought of as a lesser version of someone else.

Yet when Jenna becomes Jessica, life is far from perfect. Even though maintaining her physical appearance is extremely easy, Jenna soon learns just how much Jessica had to work in order to be the best. Liang is intentional in providing details throughout the book to show how Jessica’s success was the result of extreme, hard work. While studying for a world politics test, Jenna examines Jessica’s thorough and color-coded notes with admiration. While Jenna usually scores in the 70s and 80s in the class, she scores a 91 as Jessica after studying her notes. Liang dedicates an entire paragraph describing Jenna’s happiness at her improvement.

This paragraph is soon interrupted by the teacher’s deep disappointment in the score. When Jenna-as-Jessica returns home, Jessica’s parents give a grueling lecture about how she should have performed better. After she attempts to apologize for the “low grade,” Jessica’s mother goes as far as to say, “I don’t care about your studies … I don’t have to care about you at all. Soon you’ll be an adult … and whether you succeed or not will have nothing to do with me.” Through realistic and biting dialogue, Liang expertly creates situations where the reader cannot help but either connect to or sympathize with Jenna.

However, one of the worst parts of the novel is a long monologue from the story’s love interest, Aaron Cai. When Aaron describes how kind Jenna is and how meaningful her – not Jessica’s – existence is to him, he does so in a monologue that feels almost entirely expositional and throws off the pacing of the conversation. While his comments about Jenna’s personality would be well-appreciated by readers who only mostly know about Jenna’s flaws, readers may scoff at how bulky the dialogue is. If Liang had broken up the dialogue using physical interactions, pauses or contemplation from Jenna, the scene would have been more readable and loving.

What more than makes up for this unfortunate monologue is Liang’s ability to naturally convey and interweave Jenna’s love for painting throughout the novel. Photographs of Jenna and her paintings reflect the people around her forgetting who Jenna Chen is. Her once beautiful self-portrait described at the beginning of the novel becomes depressing and unrecognizable as half her face is erased in the second part of the story. Even as Jenna enjoys the immense privileges of being Jessica, Jenna also realizes that as Jessica, she has no time for painting. Jessica took the most academically rigorous coursework, leaving no time for what Jenna is truly passionate about. Through Liang’s consistent portrayal of Jenna’s love for painting, the author effectively supports the claim that success is different for everyone.

With brutal dialogue and an exploration of what it means to be successful, “I Am Not Jessica Chen” is a firm reminder to those wishing to be someone else that doing so is far more difficult than loving yourself.