Who doesn't love a book with long-lost sisters?! I thought this was great and I look forward to recommending it to kids. I think this is the perfect realistic fiction for kids who want realism with excitement.

This was such a great book that tackles some tough issues. Seeing these girls working through issues like bullies, race issues and social just while still have a fun element was kept the story engaging to me. I think that the twin element of the story is something that so many children wish for when they are this age and as a mom of twins I am fascinated by adoptions where twins are not kept together. I think that this book will appeal to a wide range of kids and will also really help children navigate some of these tougher issues.

This book had a LOT. Twin sisters separated at birth reunited, Chinese girl raised in a white family, Chinese girl raised in a Taiwanese family, moving, grandparent with dementia, new school, issues with classmates, racism, attacks on Asian Americans, organizing protests, classroom scenes, music and video games, following and boycotting a favorite band. I love the plot of twins reunited, but it almost seemed to be an afterthought at times. Donna and her family help off contact with Dessie and uninvited her to Donna's birthday party because they thought she was rude- because of big cultural differences. It was confusing that Dessie's older twin brothers stayed behind in their old town when she and her parents moved to help their grandma. The brothers are in high school- are they simply living by themselves? There was too much going on in this book. I thought that if the girls had gone to different elementary schools, and simply met at middle school (either regular public school or they both were sent to the same private school) it would have avoided the moving to a new town, brothers being away superfluous plots.

I think this is a good read that has good representation of different family dynamics. I thought that somethings were a little over the top, like not letting friends talk after witnessing a family argument.
But I did think that there were great issues about racism brought to light and that I liked how the families rallied around each other to help.
Dessie and Donna are both strong characters dealing with different issues within their family. I think their meeting and finding out their family history brings them together and brings out the best in each of them.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC.

When Dessie Mae moves with her family to Seattle, she's not thrilled, but knows that it's important for them to be near her grandmother, who has descended into dementia after the grandfather's death. Dessie was adopted from Hunan, China when she was two, and has two older brothers who have not moved with the family. Her father composes music for video games, and her mother plays the music, so the family life is fairly unstructured and members talk to each other casually. When she starts school, many people call her "Donna", which confuses her until she meets Donna, who looks exactly like her. Dessie had dismissed this, since she was one of very few students of Asian descent at her old school and thought this might have been a slur. Donna has also been adopted from China, and has the same birthday, so the two become fast friends and scheme to get a DNA test. Donna's family, including her Amah who is from Taiwan, is very strict, and since she has a younger brother who is the biological child of her parents, she is very worried about being the perfect student so they continue to love her. Both girls are huge fans of the band A2Z, and are working on a school project where they have to design a family crest, as a warmup to a competition to design a logo for their school, the name of which was recently changed from Sheridan to Marian Anderson Middle School. After Amah sees Dessie fight with her parents, she won't allow Donna to be friends with her, which does make Dessie think about the way her family communicates. When Amah is brutally attacked at the Pike Place Market in a racially motivated attack, the school, as well as Dessie's family, rallies around. Dessie finds out that her grandmother was a very vocal advocate for social equality back in the day, and the scarf that she wove for Dessie incorporates part of a sweater that she frequently wore to rallies. Dessie's parents, who are afraid that she will want to be a part of Donna's family because of their shared ethnic heritage, think that going to a rally to her Donna speak is too dangerous. When the band A2Z has a racist lyric in their new song, Dessie is appalled, and comments on their social media. The band replies and apologizes, making Dessie momentarily famous. Will Dessie be able to make peace with Donna as well as heal the problems within her own family?
Strengths: Just about all middle school students secretly want to have a twin... except those who actually do! Any book that posits the idea of a twin you didn't know about will be instantly popular! I liked that the families were very different, and it was interesting to see that Dessie's parents hadn't made any effort at all to offer Chinese cultural opportunities to her. The fact that their style of communication was too flippant and snappish was something that should be explored more in middle grade books, because I see a LOT of that kind of interactions from students, which is why I always try to model very polite conversations! Amah's attitude was understandable, but it was good to see that she was able to change her mind. Dessie's grandmother was involved in marches to support the Asian Community after the death of Vincent Chin in 1982, which was an good historical inclusion.
Weaknesses: Ten years ago or more, I did see the occasional student who had been adopted from China or Russia, but there has been a marked decrease in that population. I did appreciate that Chen wrote this in part because she has stepdaughters who were adopted from China into a white family.
What I really think: This incorporates the long lost twin scenario of Siddiqui's Bhai for Now, the social activism of Bajaj's Count Me In, the adoption from China storyline of Peacock's Red Thread Sisters, and agrandmother with dementia similar to the ones in Campbell's Rule of Threes or Messner's The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z.