Dear Twin

by Addie Tsai

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. Asian & Asian American Studies. Young Adult. Poppy wants to go to college like everyone else, but her father has other ideas. Ever since her mirror twin sister, Lola, mysteriously vanished, Poppy's father has been depressed and forces her to stick around. She hopes she can convince Lola to come home, and perhaps also procure her freedom, by sending her twin a series of eighteen letters, one for each year of their lives.

Genres: Fiction, Young Adult, Queer, LGBT, Contemporary, Family, Lesbian

280 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2019

About the author

Addie Tsai (any/all) is the author of Dear Twin (2019), included in American Library Association’s Rainbow List in 2021, and Unwieldy Creatures (2022), a Shirley Jackson finalist for Best Novel. She collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. They are the founding editor in chief for just femme & dandy. Addie is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Creative Writing at William & Mary, where she is Affiliate Faculty in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. She is the author of Straight White Men Can’t Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 9/25). Her scholarly articles have been published in LO:TECH:POP:CULT: Screendance Remixed (2024), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Dance and Philosophy (2021), Slapstick: An Interdisciplinary Companion (2021), and The International Journal of Screendance.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Tegan and Sara's HIGH SCHOOL, really captures the headf*ckery of twinship and all the crap people project onto twins (my own writing about twins and twinship exploits all that stuff in a way that I hope is self-conscious and critical?), written by someone who is a twin. This is fiction, but feels very grounded in personal experience, even as the story is refracted through multiple literary and pop culture sources. Nabokov's Lolita a major one -- if Lolita had a twin who wrote her a novel, this would be it. Plus a super sweet, occasionally cloying queer romance offering lightness in what is ultimately a painful story.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Possible Trigger Warnings: physical, emotional, and sexual abuse
At first the story reads like the usual suspense novel. Poppy admits she’s spent her entire life as "half a person". She can only be complete if her sister is part of her life. When we hear this opening line... “I wanted her back”. Lola has only been missing for two weeks. Poppy seems to be the only one who cares about finding her. I thought that really odd. Then we learn along the way, that Poppy has always had mixed feelings including bitterness for having to live as the shadow of her younger and more delicate twin sister. She says... “Her voice was the only one that mattered, but I’ll give her a piece of myself if it means I can bring her back.” Poppy has a secret PO Box that she waits for her sister to send her any correspondence at all...it remains empty. Poppy writes a letter to Lola each year. There are now 19 letters...one for each year of their lives that Lola has been gone. This begins as a story of two halves, but it ends with the story of one whole. The reader is let into a part of Poppy and Lola's lives as she writes each letter, each one revealing additional insight into a life that was rife with adolescent abuse, neglect, and shared trauma, Poppy learns that she can’t spend her whole life prioritizing the sister she’s always been told to protect. As the letters accumulate, the many contradictions of their twinned existence emerge. They have been both co-conspirators and adversaries since they were very young: “We weren’t the same, though no one could tell us apart. We were opposites. And that meant that everyone saw us as the same person, two bodies with joined names, one personality with two faces, a coil of sameness.” This story explores many components that I never realized are often neglected or never discussed. Everything from the realities of what it's like to even be a twin of any nationality, to what it means to be a twin that is gay and Asian in today's society. This is a YA book, but I don't think I know many young adults that would entirely be able to relate to it, and it's diffidently not for the light-hearted. Be aware also that there are some major possible triggers here.

[Jaaaaazzz · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gem of a novel. I had the opportunity to read an early draft of Dear Twin and diving back in after its publication has been such a treat! Tsai's writing is lush, thoughtful, and quiet. I was rooting for Poppy from start to finish. The mystery of what happened to Lola had me racing towards the end, and I love how the story slowly unfolds through letters. Poppy and Juniper's relationship is *chef's kiss* and there's nothing better than a happy ending for two queer characters of color. 5/5.

[Sarah Lozano · Rating 5 out of 5]

A modern Perks of Being A Wallflower Addie Tsai’s Dear Twin is a work of fiction with a lot of hard truths about coming-of-age and not quite knowing what to do when everything about your future feels like it’s on standby.

[Sarah Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm an only child. I've never wanted a sibling. In this YA hybrid -- parts autofiction, parts love letter, parts thriller -- I knew I was right. This novel is a door you want to open, a provacative tale that upsets sisterhood, queerness, and what it means from the very spine of the thing to escape.

[Shenwei · Rating 5 out of 5]

oof.

[mg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down one of my favorite books of 2019. And I read a LOT of queer books in 2019...

I just want to shout to the world how freaking amazing this book is! Addie Brook Tsai beautifully dances in the intersection of queer, twinness, and Asian life while deftly navigating romance and family life. The prose of this book is truly stunning and I wish I could get it into more hands so others can be as moved as I was by this book.

If you like character-driven novels with a great deal of queer introspection that are beautifully written, please don't pass this one up.

[Signed, Iza · Rating 4 out of 5]

"it just seems unthinkable that I wouldn't know where my twin was if she's sick, happy, or trapped."

While wondering where her twin sister had run off to (being the only one who's more concerned about finding her), writing letters to her through a secret PObox she has in attempts to draw her back home, recounting events that lead to up her disappearance, self-analysis of being queer, living under the shadows of her twin and the entire entity of twin-ness that onlookers wouldn't see, being self-reliant, emotionally abusive complex family structure (neglect)... From the voice of an Asian, part twin queer teenager, #DearTwin was such an authentic read to me.

"We weren’t the same, though no one could tell us apart. We were opposites. And that meant that everyone saw us as the same person, two bodies with joined names, one personality with two faces, a coil of sameness."

The queer romance was beautifully written, as much as the codependency felt like it is possible to be on shaky grounds. In each letter (19 in total), we get to see and know more about them Although, in the major parts of the book, Poppy was solely preoccupied with finding her Lola as the two halves that they are which almost made her not think of herself and neglect her happiness, she finds it at the end, as her person

"the hardest thing I've ever had to learn: I can't make you or Mom try harder. I can't do it on my own. And I can't make Lola be anything other than what she is."

[Mary Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Twin is wow so good. I really wasn't sure what I'd think of reading a YA book, but holy shit the author encapsulates so much of what it was like growing up for me- specifically the dynamics of overprotective parents who don't actually care about the lived experience of their children. Highly recommend, its a fast and gorgeous read.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This book has such an amazing premise (Asian, queer, and twin!) as I’m exploring how my twin-ness as part of my identity. I resonated with the struggle for individualism when you were born with someone. As a twin you’re born into intimacy: “you struggle to breathe because from the beginning you shared breath with someone” (not verbatim).

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful. Difficult, painful, aching, yes, but wonderful. I so love these characters.

[Becky Robison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought Dear Twin at Malvern Books in Austin, Texas—my last trip before the pandemic began. What I appreciated most about this YA novel is Poppy’s voice—it really felt authentic to how an actual teenager might speak. In the book, Poppy has put off going to college after her twin sister, Lola, vanished without a trace. When she’s not meeting her girlfriend Juniper for clandestine dates, she’s writing letters to Lola—eighteen, one for each year of their lives—hoping to convince her to come home. It’s a tender story, and the queer relationship is so sweet. But I have to issue some GIGANTIC content warnings for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. That said, I think it’s well worth the read.

Please note that this review was originally published on my blog.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poppy's twin sister Lola has disappeared and neither of their parents have made an effort to find out where she's gone. So Poppy has decided to send letters to Lola and send them to a location she remembers Lola using. Poppy also spends time with her friends and girlfriend Juniper. I really liked this book even when there were pop culture references that I'm unfamiliar with. The romance between Poppy and Juniper is so sweet and adorable. The letters Poppy writes to Lola describes both happy and sad moments as well as the events that led to Lola deciding to leave. It is a good idea to check content warnings for this book before reading it.

[P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the acknowledgements section made things clearer - this is like reading someone's therapy sessions but fictionalized. I don't know how much fictionalized but the emotion behind it all feels so internalized and specific that I could read along and feel happy or tense or sad for the characters but it was more like reading a journal where the person is using their own shorthand for themselves. I was glad that queer love triumphed even though I can project to a couple months in the future when the couple will have to deal with issues of co-dependency.

[Nitivia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read about 2/3 of the book and can say I enjoyed the first half of it. The premise was interesting and information was given at a nice pace to start, however the momentum of the story slowed to almost a stop when the girlfriend left town. At that point the exposition of backstory and motivations took off. I hope Addie keeps writing and getting better at their craft. They have much promise to write a great and impactful novel one day.

[katie taguchi · Rating 2 out of 5]

i wanted to like this so bad 😭

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read my review of this book here: https://booksandbakes.substack.com/p/...