The premise, centered around a dying woman and the emotional tug-of-war between her daughter and bonus daughter as they struggle to find their place in her life and their own, had the potential for a compelling, heartfelt story. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to get into. The beginning felt extremely slow and drawn out, and it simply didn’t hold my interest. I truly wanted to like this book, but I’m sorry to say that it just didn’t work for me.

This is a difficult one to review. The writing was good and author really brought the main character Genevieve to life. Unfortunately for me, she was just so unlikeable this story was so character driven that it was hard to really like the book. I wish we had gotten inside of her "sister" Arin's head more to balance things. Still, this was a true to life story. There are people that just can't break out of their spiral of negativeness. This definitely would be a great book for discussion.

this book felt far longer than it actually was. i get it's all building up and part of the story, but it just felt so long and boring. i don't think it was necessary for the narrative to focus on the day to day lives of the characters. it made the story repetitive, but maybe that was the goal; the repetitiveness of an average life. the ending felt lackluster and not very resolved. also, so much happened throughout the book that it all just honestly became a blur. the whole story felt like it was building up to something big and climactic, but it just dropped off. it felt like running to the edge of a cliff and jumping off only to land 2 feet below. i really don't have too much to say. the idea was there, but it was just not well executed. the carnal urge for success and greatness on your own only to become average and letting failures and pride from trying to succeed. honestly, i'm a little disappointed, mostly by the ending, but that's ok. but thank you netgalley for the arc!

A tragic yet beautiful account of sisterhood, this novel genuinely brought me to tears at some points. It did a good job of capturing the ways in which academic pressures and familial issues can splinter even a close sibling relationship, and I found the protagonist's characterization to be particularly adept. My only qualms about this book hinge on a plot point late in the novel which I found just a tad too meta, re: the nature of art, and also not particularly convincing. The heart-wrenching sections of the book, however, were so well done that I would recommend it to others.

Thank you for letting me read this book. I was disappointed in that I had expected to become involved in the characters and care about their difficulties. I did not find that to be the case. I will not be blogging about this book because another person may react entirely differently, and I don’t want to take away their pleasure.

A complicated story about how family members treat each other. The situation is complicated due to the family dynamics of an original daughter and another daughter who is thrust upon this family. The character driven story examines all the relationships through Gen’s narrative. It is quite sad the way the members of this family relate to each other, but there are all kinds of families and relationships. A well written sad read. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

This is a very mundane book about a character and the very normal life things happening to her, reminding me a bit of an Anne of Green Gables or Little House on the Prairie type of story (in the storytelling sense, as this is modern day). It's very slice of life. You might think the throughline is something to do with the siblings' relationship, or the "original daughter's" relationship with the mother, but I wouldn't call that the plot, though of course those topics are very prevalent. While I love slice of life stories, or stories focused on relationships rather than plot, there truly was just not much happening in this book at all.
The main character is pretty awful, and there's not really redemption anywhere to be found in this book. The other characters all have pretty severe shortcomings too (though some more than others for sure, and some unfairly take a lot of heat from the MC).
This is where I struggled: if this is a story with little plot, and it should revolve around the relationships, but there's not a lot of character development for anyone, or any life lessons (good or bad) that come across...what is the point of the book?
I'm not sure I would read again from this author, but I would recommended this to people who are looking for a modern day story told in the likeness of an Anne of Green Gables or Little House on the Prairie. Just not quite right for me.
Thank you to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for the eARC, and for the opportunity to leave an honest, voluntary review.

we are all so stupid about each other. 
the characters in this book are so frustrating, as they test each other and push and shove and seek pointless success and prioritize the wrong things and make cruel mistakes and, in other words, spend 350 pages being so unbearably human. 
this is a slow and hurt and emotional story. it took me ages to read the first half and a matter of hours to consume the second. i loved it.

What a brilliant debut novel. It’s so well crafted, with such insight and depth. I can’t wait to see what comes from this author in the future.

Genevieve Yang Su Qi is the determined, resilient, intelligent daughter of Su Yang and Wei Ming. It seems the world is waiting for her, all things possible. Then, her cousin, Arin Yan Yan Mei, joins their family, adopted when her family could no longer afford to keep her. Raised as sisters, Genevieve fills the role of older sister well, but for all her efforts, she gets pushed back by her parents, her school, and life. Genevieve faces one difficulty after another, and she has no idea how to deal with them. Even when she leaves the country to accept a job promising a big future, things go terribly wrong. When her mother develops breast cancer, she is determined to be the only one there to help her mother.

Arin is a quiet child. She doesn’t deal well with being abandoned by her parents. She’s intelligent, but nearly as smart as Genevieve. Still, people like her and good things continually come her way. She wins school awards, and she will eventually go on to become a Hollywood movie star. She’s willing to work for what she wants, and she has the ability to charm people into helping her.

This was an excellent read, and I could empathize with these young women. This is a story of family, adoption, marital infidelity, marital separation, death, and abandonment. It’s also about unexpected failure, jealousy, betrayal, mental health, assault, and unfulfilled potential. The characters are what makes this story sing, and the writing is spectacular.

I highly recommend this book.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book through NetGalley. I thank all involved for their generosity, but it had no effect on this review. All opinions in this review reflect my true and honest reactions to reading this book.

"Any strong stance was bound to attract disagreement, any success bound to attract jealousy."

Wow. I’ll definitely be looking forward to reading more from Jemimah Wei in the future. This book was truly beautiful.
I loved how the story moved between timelines. It began in the present and took us through the past until both timelines met. From the very beginning, I was fully invested in Genevieve’s family and their dynamic.
While the pacing slowed a bit in the middle, I found myself wishing we had gotten Arin and Su’s perspectives. I think their POV's would have added even more emotional depth to the story. The writing was stunning, though at times it became repetitive, especially when focusing on Genevieve’s academic rise and fall and her plummeting sense of self-worth. Genevieve’s self-destructive behavior, bitterness, and jealousy made her difficult to connect with emotionally.
My heart truly broke for her parents, who worked themselves to the bone to give their children a better life and to treat them equally. Su, in particular, moved from job to job, doing everything she could to ensure her children had opportunities she never did. The ending left me heartbroken and completely devastated.
For readers looking for a character-driven story that explores ambition and familial obligation, I highly recommend this book.

🅁🄰🅃🄸🄽🄶 : 4

🄵🄾🅁 🅁🄴🄰🄳🄴🅁🅂 🅆🄷🄾 🄻🄸🄺🄴

☆  Contemporary Fiction
☆  Sibling Rivalry
☆  Character Driven
☆  Found Family
☆  Cultural Expectations

🄵🄰🅅🄾🅁🄸🅃🄴 🅂🄲🄴🄽🄴

Genevieve has accepted a job in New Zealand and asks her father why neither he nor her mother have tried to convince her to stay. He explains:

"Su didn't stop you because she doesn't want to be a burden to you ... The best thing she thinks she can do for you is get out of your way."

But on the night before her flight, her mom finally speaks up:

"How can I stop you when this is all my life is? I understand what you're saying Gen, but forgive me, I still have to try. So what if you're not extraordinary to everybody else? Is it not enough to be special to me?"

🄵🄰🅅🄾🅁🄸🅃🄴 🅀🅄🄾🅃🄴

"I could not endure imperfection, and they could. It wasn't because I was better, or superior. It was simply because they could afford negligence."

"You and I have different ideas about what it means to be successful; for me, it's not having to struggle to death every day."

"The body registers before the heart understands."

✨️ Thank you so much to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the advanced copy of this incredible book in exchange for an honest review.

The Original Daughter tells the story of two girls-one, born into her family, the other, adopted into the family in sort of traumatic circumstances, and how the original daughter faces life with this sibling addition. And phew, she does not really handle it well. But the story is so well done, because though the original daughter can be SO terrible, you can understand where she's coming from and how she got there. How would you react to her life? I appreciate when a book forces you to question yourself and examine your reactions-sure, you may not agree with what the main character does, but can you fully blame her? And if you can blame her, can you still understand?

This is a heavily character-driven story, and with short chapters, it flows super quickly. It took me a while to read purely because it is kind of heavy, mentally, but I really enjoyed it.

In conclusion, really liked!

Thanks to Doubleday and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

A sister story that is both intimate and personal and yet sweeping and historical, The Original Daughter follows two women from childhood to adulthood. The story begins in 1996 Singapore as Gen, who is eight, is introduced to her new younger sister Arin, part of a secret second family her grandfather kept hidden in Malaysia. Their relationship is an interesting and rocky one, ranging from love to bitter rivalry. After that, the two sisters take very different paths, to be reluctantly reunited in 2015.

It was interesting to see all this through narrator Gen's eyes. She's a sympathetic but often frustrating character. But I really enjoyed this story of love, resentment, ambition, estrangement and reluctant reconciliation.

“Many people go their whole lives not quite believing it is theirs, feeling out of sorts in their body, convinced real life lies just beyond their grasp.”

I haven’t heard anyone talk about this book yet but it was recommended by Roxane Gay so was an easy choice to pick it up. And couldn’t be happier that I did.

Five stars. Please check content warnings.

If you love to read about sisters this book is for you! Fun read and going straight on display.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my review.

I didn’t dislike this one at all, but I also found myself ready for it to be over, which is not really a great thing in my reading world. Since I enjoyed the characters and some parts of the story, I still gave it an average rating. I enjoyed the narrator and the stories of her life and family and I feel it was well-written, but it did drag for me without a whole lot of stuff happening. I think this is a decent debut novel, maybe just not the best for me overall.

This book is a masterpiece, one of the best depictions of the complexities of parenthood and sisterhood that I’ve ever read. It paints the depth and breadth of human emotion, the desperation and deep scars of betrayal and abandonment, the cruelty that these scars engender but also the restorative power of love. Gen is a hard character to like but an easy one to understand. She is petty and cruel, deeply wounded and lonely, unfathomably insecure. She lashes out, treats the people who love her badly, and it is not until the very end that she understands that the reason she has felt free to push everyone away is because she never truly believed that they would leave her. The magic trick that Wei is able to pull off with such skill and nuance is that we deeply and truly understand where Gen is coming from every step of the way. We feel her deep hurt, her feeling of betrayal, her fear of being inconsequential, replaceable. We empathize with her paralyzing inability to overcome failure, perpetually underachieving and selling herself short. And we’re rooting for Gen to finally use her mother’s death as the wake up call she needs to stop muddling through life, nurturing and festering her old wounds, and find a way to start over. This book is powerful and insightful and beautifully written. Highly recommend.

While the novel’s pace is deliberately slow in places, allowing room for psychological complexity and emotional tension, some readers may find it emotionally heavy. But for those willing to engage deeply, The Original Daughter offers a resonant and rewarding reading experience.
The Original Daughter is a striking debut that balances poetic language with raw emotional truth. Jemimah Wei has delivered a novel that lingers long after the final page—I just struggled a little with the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for advanced copy, and I give my review freely

Enjoying new authors is always good and this book sounded promising, so I picked it up. It is Jemimah Wei's debut novel.

Description:
Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.

When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is. In the story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, The Original Daughter is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight.

My Thoughts:
The intensity and feeling of responsibility placed on these children was smothering and oppressive. I can't imagine growing up in such an environment. Also, it would be hard not to resent parent for taking in another child when they already have so little space and so little money. The bond between the children, Genevieve and Arin, grows strong, but the rivalry was just as strong and emotionally destructive. Wei deep dives into the characters and brings them to life - their hopes and dreams, and the hurdles in their lives. This is an emotional family drama.

Thanks to Doubleday Books through Netgalley for an advance copy.

Genevieve was an only child with her parents in Singapore, then Arin joined the family. Arin was the granddaughter of Genevieve’s grandfather’s other wife (a secret family they didn’t know about) and her parents couldn’t care for her. Genevieve’s mother welcomes Arin as if she was her own and the girls became very close. But after Arin betrays Genevieve they become estranged and Genevieve has to decide how and when to forgive and how strong their bond truly was.

I really did love this story; I enjoyed reading about the dynamics of the sisters both when they were together and apart. I am finding that family dramas really do appeal to me and this one was no exception. The weaving of the characters’ stories and their parents’ was done so well. Even though I didn’t really love either sister, I still became invested in their lives and relationships. There was one point in the story that I felt got a little slow and I didn’t enjoy as much, but it was short and the rest of the book made it worth it. The novel was chosen as the GMA read for this month and I can see why, this character driven debut is a definite read!

4.25 stars

Thank you to Doubleday and NetGalley for the ARC to review

Any book that makes me feel the strong emotions that this has invoked is always five stars for me. I chuckled, cried, and felt so moved by this story.

The story is a bildungsroman of the protagonist, Genevieve Yang, and her sister Arin, from their childhood in Singapore in 1996 to their lives in 2015. The novel spends time in these different eras and jumps back and forward in different acts, maintaining some suspense about the events of the past, since it starts off with details about the sisters' enstrangement in the future. The plot is heartbreaking and believable, banal at times recounting daily happenstances, yet poignant.

Jemimah Wei is so talented at weaving the bittersweet banalities of life into a brilliant narrative. If I didn't know this was her debut novel, I wouldn't have believed it. This is prose and characterization reminiscent of Elena Ferrante, not a budding debut author. It's difficult to have a book have gripping plot without relying on some fantasy, sci-fi or mystery concept, and yet I was reading this compulsively, and was deeply affected by the ending.

Recommended to anyone who likes strong character-driven, women-led stories about identity rooted in family, community and loyalty to one another.

Thank you Netgalley and Doubleday books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!