This begins as a story of two halves it ends the story of one whole. Rather than being interwoven throughout the ensuing pages, the mystery gives way to Poppy’s growth. What follows is one part mystery, two parts journey to self-actualization. Despite this, it’s clear enough that Poppy doesn’t feel complete without her sister-a point of frequent contention with her girlfriend, Juniper, herself a queer Asian woman, who supports Poppy’s plan only because she supports Poppy. Indeed, our narrator’s name doesn’t even appear until page sixteen, by which point we’ve been introduced to numerous quips about her twin (delivered with no small amount of vitriol).

She isn’t just unsure of who she is-she’s unsure of who she is without Lola. Poppy’s feelings of self-doubt far surpass the usual senses of incompleteness and insecurity that come with puberty.

In an attempt to coax her home, Poppy constructs a series of eighteen letters to be delivered there-one for each year they’ve been alive. Lola has long kept a secret PO box where she can receive mail not scoured by the prying eyes of their emotionally distant (and abusive) father. “But I’ll give her a piece of myself if it means I can bring her back.” “Her voice was the only one that mattered,” Poppy writes with no trace of irony.

Poppy is the only one who seems to care about finding her despite her palpable bitterness at having lived not in, but as the shadow of, her younger, more delicate twin. But by the time Poppy hits us with her opening line- “I wanted her back” -Lola’s already been missing for two weeks. At its start, Poppy admits she’s spent her entire life as half a person, made complete only by the presence of her sister. In fact, Poppy isn’t just a twin, but a mirror twin, meaning that she and her sister Lola (short for Lolita-there are layers to that) have matching-but-opposite physical traits, like a birthmark that appears on the left side of Poppy’s face but the right side of Lola’s.Īt first, Dear Twin reads like a standard suspense. But it’s clear that in this deeply personal young adult novel, fictionalized in part from the bones of her own memoir, Tsai hopes to reach certain young adults-those who identify at a core level with her pansexual, Asian-and-white, daughter-of-a-first-gen-immigrant narrator, Poppy, who can add the additional hyphenate of “identical twin” to her list of particular identities. Are you Asian? Queer? Mixed race? A twin? No? Then Addie Tsai’s debut novel Dear Twin isn’t for you-emphasis intentional.ĭon’t misunderstand-there’s broader appeal in this narrative, which also tackles the less niche topics of interpersonal relationships, individuality, and abuse, both emotional and physical.

Dear Twin by Addie Brook Tsai