It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
The famous beginning of a Charles Dickens novel could just as easily be applied to this novel by Luann Zhang about a pair of identical twins separated in early childhood.
Julie Chan works in a grocery store and still lives with her aunt who stole all the money she made as a teenager and grumbles about how much it cost to raise her and how ungrateful she is.
When her parents died in a car crash when Julie was a young kid, her aunt took her in.
Julie’s identical twin sister, Chloe, was adopted by a wealthy white couple from New York and is now a fabulously successful social media influencer.
Chloe appeared in Julie’s life one day and made a big show of gifting her a house, although the house turns out to be a rundown piece of crap that had been cleaned up enough to look good on video.
Julie finds out later that Chloe was just using her to get a sponsorship deal.
Despite the fact that Chloe clearly had no respect for Julie and didn’t want to be a part of her life, Julie can’t help but want her sister’s approval, however unattainable.
When Chloe mysteriously ends up dead and Julie is the one to find her body, the cops find Julie’s ID near the body and assume Julie is the one who died.
She decides not to correct them.
Then she takes over Chloe’s life.
What follows is a satire of social media influencers, wellness culture, and cults.
This book took a weird turn towards the end that I’m not sure I can get on board with. It’s so easy to make fun of social media and the monsters it makes without getting into cults or ritual sacrifices.
That said, I did appreciate the way in which this book covered, not only the dark side of social media (predictable) but also the upside, however rare, but very meaningful to the people who use social media to make a better life for themselves and those around them.
This book covered everything from the ups and downs of social media to wellness culture to racism, cults, and the vast difference in the life you get to live depending on whether you’re rich or poor, and how much of that depends on who raised you.