This was an original and compelling look at snippets of a unique friendship over time. The only thing that tripped me up at times was the timeline, but overall I found it quiet original and resonant.

This was an easy and enjoyable quick read! Both characters had believable development and conflicts throughout the story. I wish the book had been longer.

I completely fell in love with this book. The writing was so beautiful and really captured moments in time like a picture. The characters felt so well developed that it felt like I could know them and understood their struggles and actions.

Fiona and Jane is immediately readable. The characters draw you in with their combination of mystery and relatability. The multi-generational story of love and self-discovery is poignant. A good book for readers who enjoy a family saga of abandonment and reunion.

NetGalley Advanced Copy | Unfortunately, Fiona and Jane is our first DNF of 2022. We found the changing POV a bit off, the plot non-existent, and the pace incredibly slow.

We appreciate that this is a unique short story collection about two women growing up Taiwanese American in California, but nothing seemed to work for us, including the format. It's not poorly written, though.

The first part of the story started on a high note, as we learn about Fiona and Jane’s childhoods and parents’ immigration to the United States from Taiwan.

After that story, though, Fiona and Jane became too tedious and boring for us to continue. We put down the collection a little before halfway through.

Thank you to NetGalley and Viking for a free advanced copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

You can read our complete review on The Uncorked Librarian here: https://www.theuncorkedlibrarian.com/upcoming-new-book-releases-2022/

I included this book in Apartment Therapy's January New Book Roundup. You can find it here: https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/best-book-january-2022-37020994

This is a beautifully written coming of age story. I was engaged and invested in the lives of Fiona and Jane separately and together from beginning to end.

Thank you for my advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

Reading Fiona and Jane was in the beginning confusing as the narrative switches from Fiona to Jane each chapter, but once you got the hang of it, it was fascinating. A slice of life spanning a few decades and what a fantastic story it was. I so enjoyed following along the not very easy path of both characters.

I really enjoyed following both the individual lives of Fiona and Jane and the trajectory of their friendship. Jane felt more fully drawn and I enjoyed being in her parts of the story over Fiona, but I found Fiona's origin story more compelling. The structure of the book – a novel in stories, alternating perspectives, leaps in time – kept me guessing and engaged. And I loved that I finished reading on the last day of the year while the last story in the book also began on NYE.

This is a great coming of age story of two friends who experience the ups and downs of their teenage and early adult years together after bonding in the second grade.

Jean Chen Ho's Fiona and Jane ably straddles the novel/short story boundary. The reader has to build her own bridges between some of the individual story lines, but building them isn't hard, and the complex understanding of the central characters that's gained is very much worth it.

Fiona and Jane have been friends since second grade; the stories gathered here take them well into middle age. Their closeness waxes and wanes, but when they're with one another, the connection is solid and their understanding of one another is both deep and humorous. Each of them lives a life full of questions about their own identities and about their choices and trajectories in life.

There's also a third character worth mentioning in Fiona and Jane—Won, who also met the two in second grade, and who appears regularly as a sort of port in a storm. Won is gay, and although he has trouble bring open about that identity as a teenager, as an adult he's much clearer about his trajectory and values than either Fiona or Jane are.

Fiona and Jane is the kind of book that can be read in a single sitting, but it's worth slowing down for. Let yourself settle into it and get to know the characters over time, the way they come to know one another.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

I always say that the reason I read fiction is to have the chance to live lives I could never live otherwise, and there are passages so evocative in this beautiful debut novel by Jean Chen Ho that they made me feel like I had actually lived those moments myself, If all the 2022 releases I read end up being this good, I will have the best reading year of my life.

Fiona and Jane tells the story of two friends, both Taiwanese American but so different in who they are. In alternating chapters, we see their lives weave in and out of each other’s as they experience disappointment, heartbreak, and all the things that come along with adulthood.

There’s a slightly disjointed feeling to the book as a whole. The stories aren’t always told on a linear timeline, which makes the passage of time a little confusing. A lot of these chapters could’ve been standalone short stories, capturing vignettes in the lives of these two women. By the end of the book, I felt like I had more a sense of who Jane was than I did Fiona, an that may be intentional as the Jane chapters are told in first-person while the Fiona chapters are from a third-person perspective.

I absolutely loved the rich and multilayered exploration of female friendship that we get in this book, and the prose is smooth as silk. Jean Chen Ho is a new writer to watch for sure.

A beautiful and captivating story that isn't written about often enough. I really value and enjoy fiction that has complex characters and interpersonal relationships.

The short story collection that forms a novel, Fiona and Jane is about a friendship over decades in a nonlinear manner. I loved the detailed observations and the beautiful story of a lifelong friendship.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The story of two lifelong friends and their journeys separately and together through their lives. Beautifully written compelling story lines. ❤