God, this book would have done wonders for ninth grade me, but even though I am 23 now, I was not left unaffected by it.

Ann Liang just seems to get it. She knows what it's like to try and try and try and for that to still not be enough. To still fail and to have that failure absolutely obliterate your self-esteem. Somehow, she has encapsulated in this book what it's like to want with every fibre of your being.

I related a lot to Jenna and could not blame her for her actions because if I were in her position, I'm fairly certain I would make many of the same choices. I appreciated how Liang added depth to Jessica as well. Although she was perfect on the outside, she harboured her own anxieties and flaws.

The writing was remarkable. Probably Liang's best to date. It made me really emotional at times with how...raw it was. There was an author's note at the beginning of the book that detailed how this story was somewhat personal to Liang and I could feel itfrom reading the book.

My only complaint is the addition of the secondary characters: Leela and Celine. They felt a little...superficial to me? Leela was a little more developed than Celine, but I had trouble understanding her relationship to Jenna. Jenna mentions she has no friends, but then also says Leela is her best friend, yet Leela did not seem to care for her much, so this left me somewhat perplexed.

As always, Liang crafts a swooning romance that is perfect for slow-burn lovers such as myself.

Ultimately this is an excellent coming of age contemporary that I would recommend to everyone.

Ms. Ann Liang, the woman that you are. I don’t understand how you can write so beautifully and realistically at the same time. I relate to all of the MCs in your books and Jenna is no different. The way that she feels that she is never enough, that she can’t do anything right, that she is always comparing herself to others, is exactly how I feel too. We both go to competitive schools with so much pressure to be the best, so this book really hit me hard. Ann writes teenage characters so well and the dialogue is also so realistic. I loved the romance aspect and how naturally it came. Jenna and Aaron were perfect and I loved how it didn’t feel forced at all. I cannot wait to buy and reread this the second it comes out!

This book follows Jenna Chen, a girl who, no matter how hard she tries, never manages to get what she wants, particularly when it comes to her studies. When she fails to get into Harvard, she wishes she could become her cousin Jessica, who is a top student and easily got into Harvard. When her wish comes true, Jenna is scared at first, but then starts realizing that she actually enjoys being Jessica, even if it means the real Jessica (as well as Jenna’s body) is gone.

It was interesting to see Jenna *loving* being Jessica. Having a beautiful body, a giant house, lots of money, constantly being praised by her friends, teachers and classmates, getting awards and accolades… The author did a really good job showing how intoxicating it was for Jenna to finally get everything she ever dreamed of, and it made sense why she didn’t want to go back to her old life.

I especially liked the way things wrapped up! I liked that Jenna learned that Jessica’s life wasn’t that easy, and that Jessica herself was exhausted of all the pressure she was under, and the expectations people had of her. Seeing Jenna struggle with wishing for her life back, because, deep down, she doesn’t want it, was reeeeally intriguing, especially because she already experienced how hard it actually is to constantly get really high grades like Jessica did. The fact that, even then, Jenna still preferred to be Jessica, gave her a lot of depth. I also like that people were slowly forgetting who Jenna was, and that she learned to finally appreciate her life. And I LOVE that Jessica had ALSO wished to not be herself anymore, because of how tired she was of her life, which means that Jenna becoming Jessica had basically been BOTH of their wishes! I just thought that was all so interesting and well-done, and I’m glad that Jessica still had some depth, despite not really being in the book. Overall, I think that Jenna’s internal struggles with her self-worth are the best part of this book, which is great, because this is the *main* point of the story.



The secondary storyline is the romantic one, which, unfortunately, didn’t really work for me. 😕 I REALLY liked the LI, Aaron – he is intelligent, attentive and extremely thoughtful, and his actions are always really well explained and make sense with his story. Overall, Aaron is a great LI and a really well-rounded character (that I actually would’ve liked to see more of).

The main problem with the romance is that most its development happened off-page, before the book even began. Jenna and Aaron had been friends for a while, and Jenna had a crush on him. At the start of the book, we find out that Aaron had left for some sort of school program right after he and Jenna had a falling out, so there’s a lot of tension when they reunite at the start of the story. It’s clear that Jenna still likes Aaron even though she’s also angry about their falling out.

Throughout the book we get 1 or 2 flashbacks to their friendship, but, mostly, we just get quick mentions of things they did with/for each other. We never actually SEE them fall in love; we’re just TOLD she fell for Aaron. We never really SEE them bond; we’re simply TOLD they had some nice moments together (all of which could just be attributed to friendship, btw).

It’s already hard to make the reader believe in a romance when the characters already like each other, because you have to do a good job establishing a romance that was fully developed before the story even began. If you don’t even bother to write out a lot of flashbacks, and just keep telling the reader that the characters had nice moments in 1 simple paragraph here or there, it becomes really hard to fully believe in the romance… 😐 The culmination of all of this was Aaron’s love speech, which mentioned so many things he likes about Jenna, 99% of which happened off-page before the book even began, which means we never saw or heard about most of them, so the entire speech felt hollow and unearned, which is a shame, because it was really cute! 😢

Don’t get me wrong, Jenna and Aaron are sweet, and their moments in the past seem really nice and show how much they care for each other! However, their relationship was based on telling, instead of showing, which made it hard for me to believe in their romance.

Another thing I didn’t love about their romance was the fact that their falling out was nonsensical. Basically, Jenna tried to kiss Aaron, and he turned his head away, so she got angry at him and said “From now on, I hate you, Aaron. I seriously—I hate you so much.”…………?????? 🤨 I’m sorry, but getting mad at your best friend just because he didn’t reciprocate your feelings??? That is ridiculous. I get that she was hurt, but Jenna literally started acting like those dudes who get angry at their female friends when they friendzone them.

Aaron’s reasons for rejecting Jenna (despite liking her too) were actually really good – he really clocked her by saying that she likes to WANT things more than she likes HAVING them, and he simply didn’t want to be one of those things she quickly lost interest in. I REALLY like that explanation, because it shows that Aaron pays attention to Jenna’s actions and knows her well, and also shows him standing up for himself and calling Jenna out on her crap. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 While I did like Aaron’s side of this conflict, Jenna’s was absurd. It was soooo uncomfortable to see Jenna constantly be angry at Aaron for no reason; she was literally acting like those terrible « Nice Guys™ », and it was just icky to me. 😬😬😬



There are a couple of other things that didn’t work for me:

➤ Jenna didn’t think about her parents that often and barely even visited them when she was Jessica (even though, in the end, she talks about how much she misses them).

➤ Her friendship with Leela was literally never established. She mentions they were friends, but we barely even see that, and, in the end, she doesn’t even mention missing her friendship with Leela, yet when she goes back to being Jenna, she goes and hugs Leela…. This friendship should’ve been established, and I wish it had been a bigger point in Jenna’s life.

➤ Overall, there was a bit too much telling instead of showing: with Jenna and Aaron’s romance, with Jenna and Leela’s supposed friendship (that was barely even mentioned, tbh), with Jenna’s life (at the end of the book she goes on and on for paragraphs talking about the things she misses, most of which we never saw. I wish the author had taken a bit longer to establish her life before the change, so we had seen some of those things). 🙁

➤ The adoration everyone has for Jessica felt very cartoonish. People literally walk around constantly talking about how great and gorgeous and perfect she is, and telling her how they wish they were like her. It became ridiculous. 🙄

➤ The author is advertising this as dark academia, but I don’t really see that, tbh. Yes, it is about a girl who wants to have good grades and be the best in her class, but *dark academia*??? Idk…



Despite these issues, I overall still enjoyed the book, and I’d definitely recommend it!

Thanks to HarperCollins and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of this book!

first off, i would like to thank netgalley and harlequin publishing so much for the ARC! i love ann liang so much so it was a dream to read this one 6 months early!

ann liang did it again! this had a very similar vibe to if you could see the sun…so if you liked that this is perfect.

this was so burnt out gifted asian kid coded. as a chinese student who has been burnt out for years and felt so much like both jenna and jessica this book really hit so hard. sometimes you don’t even understand how you feel until you read about how someone else feels and that’s kind of what this book was for me. i’m also in the process of applying for medical school and there’s always going to be that fear of rejection but in a way this book has been so comforting by showing me that not attaining a goal doesn’t mean you’re a failure but rather that there are other plans for you. (i say this like i’m not going to go home and cry if i don’t score a 3200 on the UCAT tomorrow…) in fact i’ve been thinking a lot about how rejection might not always be a bad thing but rather a catalyst to push you back on the right path…so this book came to me at a perfect time where i could really appreciate the sentiment!

i know this book primarily focuses on jenna finding herself but i still wish we could’ve seen just a bit more of their relationship but i suspect that will come in a bonus epilogue of sorts which i just know i will eat up and freak out over. i truly love ann liang’s writing so much…she writes so beautifully and evocatively…

if ann has 0 fans i’m dead! 4.7 stars.

Sometimes, probably because I mostly read fantasy, I forget what it feels like to relate to a book and how seen they have the ability to make you feel. This book is a reminder to everyone that your accomplishments in high school don’t define the course of your entire life, delivered with a magical realism twist that shows what life is like when you live it in the shoes of someone who you wish you could be.

I really enjoyed the main character, Jenna Chen, and I’m sure so many people will be able to relate to and learn from her. She’s a great main character to follow, while also being realistically flawed and I loved that the main focus of the story was her learning to be happy with who she is.

I also loved the romance. At first I wished there were more moments between the two, but actually, I love it as it is because it keeps the focus on Jenna and her journey. Plus the moments we do get with her and Aaron are worth waiting for.

Toward the beginning I felt kind of iffy on the way some people acted toward Jessica. I thought some of the things people said or the way that they acted seemed a bit over the top, but as the story went on and we got to see more depth from the surrounding characters and Jessica herself it got better. I liked seeing the journal entries and learning about the mistakes she had made because it made her wind up being a very realistic character as well.

Slight spoilers for the ending as I did have a couple questions…

The end of the story was great aside for the fact that some logic felt overlooked so that other things could be focused on in order to get the happy ending quick. Jenna had been missing for weeks, and when she finally returns, her parents act like she was only gone for the morning, and no one in school mentions a thing about her being gone. Do her parents still think she had “gone away”? If so, why don’t they ask anything about how it was or where that was exactly since they had never really talked about her about her going anywhere? Why do they say they just haven’t been able to find her that morning like she had been there the whole time? Is it like in their minds she was? Same for the people at school. Do they not remember her being missing? Because nobody mentioned it. It would have been nice to seen this addressed in some sort of way because being left with those questions almost makes it feel like a plot hole.

…end of slight spoilers

Overall, this was a good story with great themes and messages that a ton of people will be able to relate to. The fact that it managed to have such fleshed out characters, and a cute side romance, with only 240 pages is shocking. I wished there had been a bit more things elaborated on toward the end about the time Jenna was gone for but regardless this was an enjoyable read.


~🅁🄰🅃🄸🄽🄶: ★ ★ ★ ✰ ✰.75 - rounded up~

“I miss my life, because even when I felt like I had nothing, I had everything. I just didn’t know it at the time. You never do, until it’s in hindsight.”
WOWW this book was fantastic. Dark and twisted and emotional and so lovely. I cannot recommend it enough; I read it in one sitting and I’m already looking forward to reading it again.

I Am Not Jessica Chen was a refreshing story about a girl who struggles with being average or less than.

One night after being put in a position to deliver humiliating news in front of her family, she wishes on a star to be her successful cousin Jessica.

The next morning Jenna wakes up with her wish having come true. Through the course of a few weeks she discovers a shameful secret and that everyone has things to hide.

When she realizes how high the cost will be to let herself go, she scrambles to undo her wish before it is too late.

I found this book relatable even as an adult, it’s easy to get caught in the day to day life and overlook all the good details in it. Self love and acceptance can be hard and Jenna’s story really touches that topic.

This story had humor, it’s sad moments, and plenty of touching ones. The chapters flowed well together.

Aaron is the bestest boy ! His role felt like an Asain drama, loved every part with him in it. We all need an Aaron in our life.

I’m happy with how this story ended, it was a bit of a win/win situation for both Jessica and Jenna.

if ann liang releases a book, i read it! those are simply the rules!

in i am not jessica chen, ann liang gives us such a special story about wanting and trying and being yourself. jenna chen isn't the best. she <i>wants</i> to be the best, but she simply isn't. she craves the attention of her peers. the respect. the awe. but she doesn't have it. her cousin, jessica chen, does. she's the most popular, the most adored, and she gets everything she wants. where jenna was raised in a modest home, jessica lives in a mansion. where jenna has to work hard for her goals, it seems like jessica doesn't even break a sweat.

a single wish changes everything. when she wakes up one morning as her cousin, jenna soon learns that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

i adored this story. i love how ann liang writes her protagonists. she makes them so deeply relatable, even when they make mistakes. jenna chen wants so deeply, and she struggles with low self esteem when compared to her perfect cousin. it's so easy to do something like that, to see what others have and turn that into your failure. she even has a bit of selfishness to her that was written so well.

the friendships here are interesting and different from ann liang's previous friendships since, here, they aren't really jenna's friends, but jessica's. i loved that little twist on the dynamics. even though we're reading from jenna's perspective, pretty much all of the characters see her as jessica and interact with her as such. i loved how ann liang was able to use this to give jessica some depth despite her absence for a lot of the book.

& i loved aaron cai! the love interests in ann liang's books are always so great to me, and aaron was no exception.

thank you netgalley & harpercollins for the eARC!

4.5 ⭐️
Ann Liang never disappoints!! “I am not Jessica Chen” was so emotional and I loved the way all the different sorts of relationships were written, especially the complex ones such as Jessica and Jenna. I also absolutely loved Arron Cari’s character!! His love confession and the way he talks about Jenna is top tier!

What an interesting book. At the beginning, I'd thought it'd be very hard to read because of the sheer second-hand embarrassment this book would cause me, but luckily for me it was nothing of that sort. It was fun and dynamic as it was straight forward. Jenna Chen is an interesting, three dimensional character that we're used to seeing in Ann Liang's books but perhaps she is bit of an unreliable narrator, in the sense that you really don't understand her until you get close to the end and you get to hear about her from other perspectives, mainly Aaron's. She is too focused on her flaws and she has very little understanding of who she is because she's too focused on the person who she wants herself to be, and that person is Jessica Chen. Now, I found the character of Jessica to be a little exaggerated. I understand that to be the point, I really do, but her being treated like a movie star in her school felt a little over the top, but maybe I feel like this because I haven't been in a Havenwood Academy type of school. At the end she becomes more of a real person rather than a deity that everyone around her pretended her to be, but it fell a little flat, in my opinion. The romance part of the book was also very lovely and enjoyable to read, and Aaron was a good love interest, I really liked him and his addition to the story. At the end, this gives you everything you'd want it to give: A nice, enticing plot, satisfying character development, a pleasurable reading experience and that nice, relaxing feeling you get once you're finished.

alexa! play 505 by the arctic monkeys 🙈

Thank you HarperCollins and Netgalley for sending me this arc!


"you would have wanted me for an afternoon, and I would have wanted you for the rest of my life.”

Oh my Gosh you guys. This book was so so much different than Ann Liang's other books, it is so much more relatable and a bit more sad. I was so surprised that the book had longer chapters than usual, but i loved it!!

And can we talk about Aaron Cai 🥹🥹 I love him so much he might have earned #1 for my fave Ann Liang male leads 🙈 (dethroned Julius Gong, even I was surprised tbh).

Oh and Jenna Chen 🥹 Oh my darling pookie I love you so much i'm gonna hug you so tight


5/5 stars, Ann Liang books, you will always be loved by me!!!

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC!

I finished this book in just a few hours and let me tell you it did NOT disappoint!

I Am Not Jessica Chen follows Jenna Chen and her journey of not feeling like enough while constantly being compares to her cousin Jessica. Everything changes when she makes a wish to be her and wakes up the next day as Jessica—only now she’s faced with the struggles of being “the model student”, her childhood crush returning from Paris, and whatever secrets her cousin has been keeping.

As usual, Ann Liang succeeds in writing the perfect relatable story. Jenna constantly wants what she can’t have, and is always feeling lesser than those around her. What I liked about her character is how consistent she was. She wanted to be Jessica, craved the fame, beauty, and wealth of Jessica’s life. And once she got it…she loved it. An incredibly realistic take on something unrealistic.

What I also enjoyed was the lack of a cliche storyline in this book. I was waiting for the familiar beats of regret and missing her old life but instead there was a raw selfishness to Jenna’s behavior that was much more refreshing.

Overall, I really enjoyed this read, and I highly recommend it!!

I am truly one of the many Ann Liang readers that get baffled whenever she releases a new book because she always pulls the “don’t let them know your next move” kind of thing because tell me why I CRIED? I was only in the Author Note part and I was already BAWLING. This is indeed a book about wanting so, so much more not just from life but also from ourselves.

If you think Sadie Wen from I Hope This Doesn’t Find You was relatable, wait until you meet Jenna Chen. She’s waaaay too relatable it was kind of scary. Reading her was liking reading a book about myself AND I do not like reading books where a character perfectly mirrors me because then I’ll realize how flawed I actually am as a human being and there are traits which I should unlearn or forget. Lol.

Ann Liang’s writing style greatly improved from her narratives down to curating her characters AND she has never let me down when it comes to her romance. Absolutely 10/10 chemistry from Jenna and Aaron. Aside from the romance, there are a lot of factors that made this book so great and personal to me such as: Jenna’s monologues (especially when it came to talking about her cousin, Jessica) and even her thinking that everyone around her has always been natural OR literally just better than she ever was. Is this fucking play about me?

Kidding aside, I also want to praise how Liang perfectly captured the delirious feeling of wanting to be someone else so badly that we even reach the point of wishing they were somehow a bad person so we can have a single justification as to why they shouldn’t be envied at all. But most of the times it cannot be helped. Some people are too perfect they seem surreal—and in this surrealistic idea do we realize that we’re never gonna amount to who and what they are, like what Jenna felt towards Jessica. This book hit me neurally that each sentence felt like a sentence weaved to hit me in the nerves and in the heart. Like what a book should actually be.

As per Liang’s note, this is a book to remind us that we’re not alone in this feeling—and that is exactly what it made me feel. It is both comforting and reflective. I hold this book so dear to me.

this was another absolute masterpiece by ann liang, i've literally rated all of her books 5 stars, no matter how innocent they seem, i can always count on her books to make me feel something
and I Am Not Jessica Chen, obviously doesn't seem so innocent and so i felt everything. as i suspected i did tear up at several different points and i highlighted so much. i think that this is such an important read/story, especially for those struggling in similar situations.

honestly, this hit really hard for me and i related to a lot of what the main characters were feeling. that's part of the beauty of this book: everybody can relate to a different part and take something out of it. maybe you won't relate to anything at all, and that's okay, but i think that the way that ann liang conveys certain themes regarding mental health and culture in ALL of her books makes them exceptional. whether it be jenna chen or jessica chen you relate to, all of the portrayals in this novel are so realistic and accurate.

i can't even begin to describe how much i relate to this and how important the messages in this book are. thank you ann liang yet again.

and like always, this made me miss china so much and long to be surrounded with the people, culture, food, etc

i have no complaints, i couldn't have asked for anything for from this book or ann liang.

3.75 ⭐️
I resonated with Jenna at times especially with comparing yourself to others and not wanting to let down your loved ones for all their sacrifices. As well as wanting other people's acceptance and letting others define your worth. As for the plot, It felt a bit shallow for a dark academia but it got the point across. I didn't feel a lot of urgency for what would happen next. Once Jenna took over Jessica's body, it wasn't as brutal as I expected it to be. Jessica's friends and student body were a bit one-dimensional and just didn't come across as very compelling individuals to read about despite the competitive nature of the school. My favorite aspect was Jenna's character arc. Her internal struggles of wanting to be recognized and constantly comparing herself to others and then realizing not everything's as it seems. Jenna finally saw her worth and longed for the life she took for granted and realized she wanted to live as herself again with the knowledge that she ultimately dictated her life. The romance was wholesome and convincing to me. Aaron reminded Jenna of who she was and listed the things he loved about her including how she uplifted the people in her life including him. He was just the sweetest. And lastly, I agree that we need more Jessica! I was so interested in her character and her struggles to uphold everyone's expectations at the cost of her wants and needs. She wasn't treated like a human being and was always idolized when she just wanted to live. Her resolution was a bit abrupt so it'd be cool to see more of her growth.

Oh my gosh. I think this may be my favourite Ann Liang. I know i've rated almost all of her books 5 stars, but i think this one is just special. I've never felt so seen by a book, and I sped through it in a day. I could FEEL Jenna's joy and her pride and her want, and i could feel my own heart plummeting when things went wrong. I love the main characters—both Jenna and Jessica—so much. honestly i yearn for there to be a Jessica Chen spin-off because I truly adored her character from what we saw. Other than that, Aaron and Jenna's relationship was so sweet, and when the 80% twist hit I had my head in my hands. The fact that he remembered to get her a bookmark *in the first chapter* even though he'd been away for a year (hehe) was SO endearing and I almost immediately loved him.

But really my favourite part of this book is Jenna's coming-of-age. I wish I'd read this book when I was struggling through the worst years of my asian education system—I feel like both Jenna and Jessica at the same time.

Truly such a gem of a book. I adore it, and it has cemented its place as one of my top books of the year.

This story, at its very core, is about wanting so deeply. To be perfect. To be enough. To the point where it’s disastrously obsessive—but also viciously human. Not only does Ann perfectly capture this visceral feeling on the pages, but she does so in a way that makes you feel less alone for doing so. I truly mean this when I say this is Ann’s best work.

Thank you to Harpercollins for the eARC in exchange for an honest review! 5/5 stars.