“Irrevocably dispersed throughout the land he abandoned, the land where he belonged.”
Until page 150, I thought Jemimah Wei’s The Original Daughter (Doubleday 2025) was easily going to be a 4-star read. I enjoyed the storytelling style and, more importantly for me, I enjoyed the story. At page 150, there is a marked shift in our leading lady and what follows is a spiral into unreasonableness and unlikableness. What happened to the smart girl who flushed her grandfather’s ashes to release her new sister from the bonds of guilt? What happened to her parents who found so much strength and certainty in their love for each other until they didn’t? (I know what happened on the page, but the entire novel shifted and never regrouped.)
Genevieve isn’t a likable adult. Not even close. And the events that severed her relationship with her adopted sister are relatively miniscule (not the attack itself but how Arin uses the attack) but made massive due to jealousy, pride, guilt, and shame. I get that they are all human emotions, but the jealousy and anger that clouds Genevieve’s POV without flesh on those monsters makes the novel a bit hollow for me.
I just didn’t care. Maybe that’s the point as neither does Gen.
The concept of a secret family and a cousin-of-a-stranger turned sister is great – Arin’s struggles as seen through Gen are well done and articulated. The building of the rivalry, the sudden and out of the blue desire to be a Youtube star, the academic pressure, the unreliableness of Gen as narrator, the dying mother and absentee father, each with their own twisted, broken motives… it all reads as tired.
But those first 150 pages.
A Girl Named Tommi 