Started reading Ann Liang’s I Am Not Jessica Chen (2025), which is “for anyone who’s ever wished they could be someone else”. Here is a stand-out sentence:
“When you’re so widely known and loved, so soaked in glory you’re swimming in it, all you have to worry about is maintenance, not metamorphosis.”
And here is another:
“It’s cruel, really, how the world tends to present its most beautiful parts to you when you’re so profoundly sad. Like a crush who comes up to you in the moonlight and smiles at you each time you try to move on — just enough to keep you lingering, to make you wonder how good things could be. If only, if only.”
This book is said to be centred on the “body swap” trope. Considering the author’s fame, I expect there will be far more innovation than cliche. Funny how we rely on tropes to navigate through our reading while always looking forward to discovering something original and refreshing.
Another interesting point about the “body swap” trope is that, more often than not, we can see the impact of the swap only from one perspective, but not the other. Unless the two entities involved in the body swap get to exchange their experiences and insights at a certain point, we as readers will never know the full story about the swap — only one-sided. I look forward to discovering whether this pattern applies here.
(Day 30 #WarmWinterRead #WWR25 via @librarieschangelives)
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 