I Am Not Jessica Chen by Ann Liang: Review by Colleen Mondor

April 7, 2025April 1, 2025 locusmag 0 Comments Colleen Mondor, fantasy

I Am Not Jessica Chen, Ann Liang (Harper Collins 978-1-335-52312-9, $19.99, 320pp, hc) January 2025.

As Ann Liang’s latest novel opens, 17-year-old Jenna Chen is having the worst day ever. After striving and struggling for years at prestigious Havenwood Academy, yet never quite doing well enough to be one of the best, she has been denied acceptance to Harvard University. Sitting at a celebratory surprise dinner for her perfect cousin Jessica, who was accepted, she must admit her humiliation in front of the star of Havenwood, the student who is the best in every class, a first-rate swimmer, also gorgeous and, maybe worst of all, always so damn nice. Jenna’s parents are devastated by her failure, her aunt and uncle struggle not to seem too proud of their successful daughter while Jessica and their friend Aaron both try to make Jenna feel something other than a colossal failure. But to her, it’s all impossible; Jenna cannot bear to continue her mundane and ‘‘less than’’ existence. Under a shooting star that night she makes a wish, ‘‘I want to be Jessica Chen.’’ The next morning she wakes up in her cousin’s body to discover that her wish has come true.

I Am Not Jessica Chen is as far from a comedic body-switching story as a book can get. Jenna never goes through a period of delight over the change and immediately wonders about her parents and is worried about her missing cousin. When Jessica doesn’t show up at school in Jenna’s body, she knows she has to find out what has happened to her, but finds her time consumed with all the effort necessary to be Jessica. Everyone expects Jessica to be the best, and so as Jessica, she must be the best. This aspect of the novel might seem predictable – since the pressures on the top of the class can be extreme – but Liang goes deeper than that into how Jessica and Jenna’s classmates act, how the teachers interact differently depending on the student they are talking to and, as the cousins are Asian (both daughters of Chinese immigrants), the tension between Havenwood’s so-called ‘‘legacy’’ students and the relatively new Asian students. There’s also a revealing moment with how Havenwood’s founders treat those with money for donations versus the smart kids who bring them accolades. (It’s all very polite, just… very revealing.) As Jenna juggles all the balls to keep the Jessica charade going while frantically trying to find the real Jessica, she realizes that her true existence is disappearing, and with it her cousin and herself. She becomes desperate to reverse the wish. It’s not as easy as just saying the words, however, and there is also the added problem raised by Jessica’s diary. As it turns out, she made her own wish and it potentially complicates things a great deal.

There’s a great exchange between Jenna (as Jessica) and their friend Aaron, who knows the truth, that encapsulates much of the novel’s message. ‘‘There’s nothing you want more than to want,’’ he tells her. But once she obtains the thing, or goal, that she wants, it promptly fails to satisfy her. There is always something else that she thinks will be the thing that finally makes everything perfect but nothing does the trick. Success is almost a drug for Jenna, ‘‘such a beautiful thing’’ she recalls at one moment. It’s ‘‘the closest you’ll ever fly to the sun. The closest you’ll ever get to immortality.’’ But even with any success or goal she attains, Jenna is still always Jenna, maybe in a new dress, maybe with a winning essay, but never, in her mind, enough. She is not Jessica and now having gotten her greatest wish, being Jessica, she learns that is not enough either. She’s also worried about Jessica, which is a wholly unexpected emotion but an important one that drives her later decisions.

Jenna’s journey through her cousin’s life, which lasts many weeks and involves interactions with classmates, teachers, family, and friends takes the protagonist deep within both herself and Jessica. She learns about the weight of truth that can hide behind a facade and begins to finally appreciate all the burdens she and her classmates are carrying for no good reason other than to make other people happy. (And when does it end? Even if she got into Harvard, it would just be another round of having to be best. This is something Jessica realized first, and it exhausted her.) A coming-of-age drama, sweet romance, and perceptive consideration of the negative impact of outsized expectations on teenagers, I Am Not Jessica Chen makes for compulsive and thoughtful reading; certainly a book to pass on to teens wishing they could be someone else and missing all that matters about embracing themselves.

Interested in this title? Your purchase through the links below brings us a small amount of affiliate income and helps us keep doing all the reviews you love to read!

Colleen Mondor, Contributing Editor, is a writer, historian, and reviewer who co-owns an aircraft leasing company with her husband. She is the author of “The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska” and reviews regularly for the ALA’s Booklist. Currently at work on a book about the 1932 Mt. McKinley Cosmic Ray Expedition, she and her family reside in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. More info can be found on her website: www.colleenmondor.com.

This review and more like it in the March 2025 issue of Locus.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.