Fiona and Jane

by Jean Chen Ho, Natalie Naudus (Narrator)

7 hours, 17 minutes

A witty, warm, and irreverent book that traces the lives of two young Taiwanese American women as they navigate friendship, sexuality, identity, and heartbreak over two decades.

Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters and carrying with them the scars of their families' tumultuous pasts. Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition - qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father's sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other's lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they've lost.

In stories told in alternating voices, Jean Chen Ho's debut collection peels back the layers of female friendship - the intensity, resentment, and boundless love - to probe the beating hearts of young women coming to terms with themselves, and each other, in light of the insecurities and shame that holds them back.

Spanning countries and selves, Fiona and Jane is an intimate portrait of a friendship, a deep dive into the universal perplexities of being young and alive, and a bracingly honest account of two Asian women who dare to stake a claim on joy in a changing, contemporary America.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Contemporary, LGBT, Queer, Literary Fiction, Audiobook

8 pages, Audible Audio

First published January 4, 2022

About the author

Jean Chen Ho is a writer in Los Angeles. She was born in Taiwan and grew up in Southern California. Jean is the author of Fiona and Jane (Viking, 2022), a linked story collection. She's a doctoral candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California, where she is a Dornsife Fellow in fiction. Her writing is published in Georgia Review, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Guernica, The Rumpus, Apogee, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the best things a book can be about is girls being friends.

Unfortunately, in spite of the title and the cover and the synopsis and the marketing and what my heart says and what I want (the most important factor of all), that's not really what this is about.

Because for a book about a friendship we got remarkably little of them being friends.

Such is the sad existence of a book is made up of non-chronological short stories, and the sadder existence for the reader.

It is very confusing, and also most of the time the Fiona and the Jane in question are not spending these stories together anyway. So what are we doing here.

I love imperfect characters (they're the best kind! Messed up protagonists are my f*ckup children), but the structure of this meant we didn't get to see them grow. It was hinted by the final story that Fiona had, and that Jane was about to, but we didn't get to see either because of that?? And the nonchronological nature of the stories didn't help with that.

You could say it hurt, even.

To finish out our big three of unsatisfying characters, these stories are from both our protags' perspective, with literally no difference between the two POVs. The only hint of who we were reading was that Jane's was in first and Fiona's third - otherwise, their voices were identical, and their personalities didn't differ too much either.

So to sum up:
- virtually identical characters
- with no real arc
- whose titular relationship is barely seen.

Not much to like, unfortch.

Bottom line: See the above summary!

2.5

[Cindy Pham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives a lonely, contemplative feeling as we follow these two women and their respective problems over two decades. The most interesting thread to read about was one of the protagonists discovering her father is gay, and the aftermath of their family after finding out about it. The book follows an interesting format of short stories that jump between different time periods during the two characters’ lives, but as I look back on this, I wonder what is the purpose for this format and why it was told non-chronologically with jumping between different parts of their lives. I wish there was more of a narrative thread to follow, but you can argue that this is what makes the book resemble more like reality, where real life does not have a narrative thread, we remember things out of order, there is no straightforward plot or closure/resolutions, etc… still, I personally would have preferred a more complete narrative. I would have also enjoyed more of a focus on the friendship between the protagonists rather than two isolated individuals whose lives only vaguely intertwined. We got to see more of their relationships with other men rather than with each other. I wish we had gotten to see more of them connect and impact each other’s lives, as I feel like the title and synopsis for the book is misleading otherwise.

[daph pink ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fiona and Jane turned out to be a rather disappointing book, especially given that it was one of my most anticipated publications for 2022. I was really looking forward to starting my "new releases" reading trip with this book, which was described as a witty and warm tale about two best friends navigating through friendship, sexuality, and heartbreak. It was a major letdown in a number of ways. Let's take it one at a time.

👭 Characters (+1 stars)

Fiona and Jane are each fascinating individuals in their own right. They were imperfect and made some poor mistakes, but I enjoyed putting myself in their shoes and navigating my way through their lives. They each had their own traumas and difficulties, and their friendship was stuck in the middle of it all. Won was also a fascinating guy to watch. The supporting ensemble, which included Jane's mother, Jesper, Kenji, and their various romantic partners throughout the decade, all had a part to play. In terms of characterization, I believe Jean Chen Ho excelled.

🌼 Representation (+1/2 stars)

Loved to see the Asian and queer representation. It was one of the things that kept me going through the book.

✍️ Writing (+1/2 stars)

We are talking about the dialogues and narrative here which seemed a bit controversial to me because at times I really enjoyed their conversation with each other but other times it bored the hell out of me. The dialogues were not dramatic which I am grateful for but they weren't as impactful also. But nevertheless the writing helped me get through the book so I think I will give it half stars.

🔖 Story/plot/narration/timeline (-2 star)

I understand that it's literary fiction, and that it's not supposed to go somewhere most of the time. It's just a real-time issue with people caught in the middle. I understand, but the way this book was written in a short story format didn't give me much time to connect with the characters because of the shifting times and narratives, which frequently confused me and required me to slow down to grasp the scenario. Some stories were intriguing, while others were not, and the non-linear timeline frequently perplexed me.

💭 Impact (-1 star)

This is more of "it's me not you" situation. This book didn't had any impact on me I will probably forget it in a month or two. I didn't gained anything out of it not in terms of emotional attachment or a relatability. So I think that was a major turn off for me.

That's it I guess. I don't want you to stop from reading this book but this was my analysis. I hope you could enjoy this..

[el · Rating 2 out of 5]

sold as a short story-adjacent collection surrounding the same pair of friends, fiona and jane vacillates haphazardly between first person and third person, sometimes for no apparent reason at all—a choice that ultimately undermines the uniformity of a series of short stories set around the same two characters' lives. jane's character, who we come to know through more intimate first person portraits of her life, at one point interrupts a third person fiona chapter so that readers can get jane's thoughts on the current storyline unspooling—only now also in third person? the choices made by jean chen ho herein feel random and rarely pay off.

i was looking forward to a woman-centered series of "vignettes," like clicking through a view-master reel, told at different points in their lives. the effect here, however, was incredibly disjointed, like we were meeting completely new characters every other chapter. the format did not serve to ground or even establish a stable sense of character for any of the people sketched out. every single character, including the titular fiona and jane, was one-dimensional, bordering on walking clichés, with next to no personality at all. i can't even call these people archetypes. they feel more like cannon fodder, created to move the collection along and fill pages, and i was totally cut off from any emotional connection to them as a result.

i'm honestly surprised by the trajectory of this book, because i enjoyed the first chapter's exploration of father/daughter strife through the lens of burgeoning sexuality. but meeting fiona and jane at wildly different stages every chapter, sometimes moving backwards in time for no discernible reason that i could gather, ultimately did not work for me; it in fact hindered the narrative. non-chronological perspective shifting is extremely hard for skilled writers to pull off in normal novels, not to speak of unified short story collections. certain narrative fixtures that might have served to stabilize the story—characters like won and the girls' mothers, who alternately joined them together and set them apart—went severely under-utilized, so that they were mere passing figures rather than significant relationships firmly built into the women's lives, to moor them and their development.

more to the point, i wanted something about friendship, tenderness, even attraction between women, and though there were the barest slivers of that on occasion, this was ultimately a short story collection obsessed with men and romance. specifically, obsessed with these women's romantic relationships with men—and their romantic failings/dysfunctions. both main characters share unresolved emotional arcs about being lonely and searching for outlets through awful men, and although jane is also attracted to women, that attraction is—in my opinion—peripheral at best, like an added afterthought. by comparison, the men (like jasper, who literally gets his own third person cheating interlude, and julian) are given more time, detail, and care than any of their female counterparts—a trend i'm growing more and more tired of with each book i read.

to summarize, this collection felt uninspired and unimaginative, was rife with clichés in both its literal dialogue—the sort of conversations you'd see written into late-night television with the sole purpose of providing white noise to fall asleep to—and its actual plot execution, and it wasted large swaths of time fixating on boring, badly written male love interests harboring deep-seated misogyny and cheating tendencies. fiona and jane's "friendship" could barely be called that; what we saw written out largely amounted to petty bickering and repeated conflicts that cropped up because of—you guessed it!—men! when i reached fiona and jane's open ending, it felt like i'd lost the last 60 pages in the stapled-together sheaf of papers i had the misfortune of picking up.

i am so bewildered by the creative choices made for this collection, and so tired of being sold books about women that are really just thinly disguised ruminations on shitty, damaged men. worse still, neither fiona nor jane is particularly likable, as a pair or individuals. in fact, i disliked them enough to want to rush through the second half of the book, and was filled with relief when i finally finished. it's a 2.25/5 for me.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one was a disappointment. The prose was generic. The characters uninteresting. The stories unmemorable. There wasn’t anything particularly offensive about this, but on more than one occasion I had to ask myself why I was reading it. I don’t have a good answer.

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

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2 ½ stars

Fiona and Jane is yet another one of my most anticipated 2022 releases that left me wanting. While the author is certainly a decent writer, I found myself dissatisfied by the friendship that was meant to be the core of her book. Their relationship did not feel complex or nuanced, in fact, it did not even come across as particularly credible. More page time is spent on the inane arguments they have with the wishy-washy men they have sexual and or romantic relationships with than their friendship. The majority of the book is all about characters bickering with one another (which i would have not minded as much if said characters had been realistic or if, at least, their bickering had been somewhat entertaining....).

This book follows two Taiwanese American girls Fiona and Jane as they attempt to navigate girlhood and later on adulthood. While the earlier chapters give us a glimpse into their family history, the later ones are more concerned with their dating lives. They either end up dating manipulative men or end up pining for emotionally unavailable guys. While Jane is queer, her sexuality is very much depicted in a way that left a lot to be desired. At first, some of the chapters imply that she’s a lesbian but then it becomes apparent that she’s probably bi, pan, or queer. Nothing wrong there but for the fact that none of the chapters really focus on her same-sex relationships. These are mentioned, or even appear briefly, but they are not given the same weight as the relationships she has with men. Maybe if the men she ends up entangled with came across as fully-developed characters, I wouldn’t feel so frustrated but they did not and in fact, they were very similar to the men Fiona is with. Rather than expanding on a particular moment in their lives, these chapters usually hone in on a series of silly arguments they have either with each other or the men they are with. These arguments did not always come across as believable and they struck me as staged. As Fiona often takes the role of self-victimizing quasi-hysterical woman, I did not feel particularly engaged in the highs and lows of her romantic life. It did not help that her chapters were narrated in the 3rd person while Jane’s in the 1st one. Because of this I felt distanced by Fiona’s chapters in a way that I wasn’t with Jane. That is not to say that Jane was likeable or a good friend. She was merely the less annoying of the two. At the end of the day only one chapter really honed in on their bond, and the rest spend more time recounting the horrible men they end up with. Their bond was by no means intense or fraught, and there was something very lukewarm about their dynamic. We are told that they are, allegedly, friends. But did this friendship really come across in the actual story? Not really. Early on Fiona does something quite unforgivable to Jane and this is never truly addressed by either party.
I would have liked more time spent on exploring their family dynamics and I think their inner lives could have benefited from being more developed too. We see them at dinners or parties having the same mean-ish conversations with their friends (who make cameo appearances), moaning about the men they are (allegedly) deeply drawn to despite the way they treat them and having exceedingly millennial concerns. I disliked certain plotlines, especially the one involving Jane’s guilt over her father’s death. His sexuality and death become her ‘sad backstory’, something to make her character appear deeper than what she truly is. You might argue that the reason why their friendship features so little in their chapters is that in their adult lives away from one another etc etc…but then why, when the two are once again in the proximity of each other, would you dedicate the chapter actually titled 'Fiona and Jane' to Jane’s relationship with a traumatized veteran?
I found both of the titular characters to be selfish, ridiculous in the way they paint themselves as the wronged party, boring (they lack drive and seem to have no real passions/interests), and petty. All in all, I found them to be singularly unlikable. The way Fiona and Jane is formatted too made their relationship appear all the more insubstantial. The book consists of self-contained chapters that can be read like short stories. This type of structure can and does work if in the hands of, say, authors such as Zalika Reid-Benta, Sang Young Park, or Patricia Engel, but here this mode didn’t work so well. The halfhearted attempt at nonlinearity felt pointless, especially since, with the exception of the first three chapters/stories, the rest all take place in an ambiguous time and I was never quite sure in what phase of Fiona and Jane’s lives we were. Doubtlessly, the string of dickish men they become involved with made these chapters rather samey. Additionally, with the exception of the first 3 chapters, Fiona and Jane did not have a strong sense of place.
I will say that the author does highlight the stereotypes attached to women with Taiwanese heritage (at one point one of them dates a korean guy who says taiwanese girls are more ‘promiscuous’ than korean ones). And, despite all of my criticisms, towards the structure of the book, the underdeveloped friendship between Fiona and Jane, I did find the first 3 chapters compelling. The first one is narrated by Jane and reminded me of Mariko Tamaki’s Skim. The second one, if memory serves, is about Fiona’s early years in Taiwan and we see how her grandparents try their best to shelter her. The third one is certainly hard-hitting as it shows how in their efforts to be ‘grown up’ Fiona and Jane end up in a potentially dangerous situation, this one made me think of T Kira Madden's memoir. But the rest? Meh. They brought to mind Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw . While the two belong to different genres, they both feature thinly rendered millennial-ish characters who have stupid arguments with each other. The trajectory of these arguments did not ring true to life. The characters’ responses to the so-called betrayals also struck me as melodramatic and inconsistent. At one point Jane is insulted and enraged at Fiona after the latter asks her whether she’s had an affair with the man she’s currently seeing. She dramatically storms off but then we learn that Jane knew that he was cheating on her and she is the one who is now begging Fiona for her forgiveness. Surely when Fiona first accused her of being the ‘other woman’ Jane, the friend that up to this point had been painted as the more reasonable and forgiving one, would not have either felt a niggling of guilt over the knowledge that Fiona is right about the cheating, just wrong about the other woman’s identity, or understood that her secrecy and complicity over the affair had made her suspect in her friend’s eyes? No. None of this goes through her head. She just becomes rather hysterical and childish, like, How dArE ShE, wE aRe FriENds.
Another thing that annoyed me is how the author depicts queerness. I did not like the avoidance of words such as bi/pan/and queer. These are not bad words. No one is saying that Jane had to talk about her sexuality 24/7 or wear a badge but that when someone calls her a lesbian in front of a guy she’s into, she later ‘reassures’ him by dismissing him, on the lines of, Who? Me? A lesbian? Nah, you know Whatshisface, he’s full of it. As if ‘lesbian’ were an insult of some sort. While she’s confused over what she feels for this guy she has a kind of rebound relationship with a woman who is given very little page time in comparison to her male partners…why?!
It seemed that time that could have been spent on developing Fiona and Jane’s characters, their backstories, their fears/desires etc., is sacrificed in favour of wannabe gritty and realistic scenes involving their time with forgettable assholes.
It makes sense that some of these chapters were originally published separately. The work feels disjointed and directionless, the vapid discussions of the characters were boring and I found the whole book to be deeply lacking in humour. The sex scenes came across as cheesy because they were trying really hard to be edgy and real. The last few lines, where Jane is all like, I will write a book about us or whatnot, was just..unnecessary.
All in all, I did not care for this novel. If you are interested in books that actually explore the themes this book was supposed to, I recommend you check out Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something. If you liked Fiona and Jane, well, I’m happy that you were able to appreciate it more than I was…so pls don’t @ me.

[Raven · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I still thought of her as my best friend, though more and more she was becoming a story to me, one whose plot I couldn’t make sense of because either I was missing information or maybe I’d forgotten something from before—something important—and it was too late to ask about it now, because it would mean admitting I hadn’t been paying attention.”

As I read Fiona and Jane, I felt comfortably in my element, like a moray eel hiding in coral reefs. It begins with an epigraph from James Baldwin: “I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time.” And since I’m always available for a meditation on interpersonal relationships, Jean Chen Ho had my attention. And then there’s that first chapter/story with its strong sense of place and palpable emotion. I’ve read a lot of the other reviews, and I know they’re mostly fair to middling. And, I mean, I get it.

Some of the reviews say that the novel is disconnected because it’s an assortment of random stories that switch between first and third person narration. I can see how people would not enjoy that. I’m into, like really into it. I love random assortments, novels in stories, vignettes, and such. Sandra Cisneros is one of many foundations of my literary education and Jenny Offill is one of many literary loves of my life; meaning to say, disjointed vignettes don't bother me none.

And I know a lot of the reviewers feel some type of way about the fact that Fiona and Jane don’t interact much throughout the novel. And to that, I say, maybe the lack of interaction is the point, y'all. I can see why someone might want a novel centered on the moments that Fiona and Jane spend together. But the thing that I really love about this novel is that it’s centered on negative space: who Fiona is before she meets Jane, who Jane is when Fiona leaves their hometown and Jane decides to stay, who they are several years later. I appreciate this novel so much because as I stumble my way through adulthood, I realize that friendship (for me, at least) is more often than not about the negative space.

Fiona and Jane is a really beautiful meditation on friendship even though we barely ever see Fiona and Jane interacting. Fiona and Jane, more than anything I can remember reading or watching lately, captures the feeling of loving someone dearly but having not spoken to them in ages and wondering if the friendship exists, wondering what sustains friendships anyway. It captures the feeling of wanting to grasp onto an old friend, not because the time you’ve spent with them is some sort of investment, but because they’ve known various iterations of you, because you’re as young as you’ll ever be again and there is a comfortable ease and intimacy at watching time unfurl with people who already know and love you— who have continued to commit day-after-day to loving and knowing all the various iterations of you.

Yes, sometimes some parts of the novel are corny, but I think it’s kind of charming. Yes, sometimes the book is focused on Fiona and Jane dealing with whatever sucky partner they have at the moment, but it’s like that sometimes. For me, those first two chapters (!!!) and the overall themes make up for whatever’s lacking in dividends.

[B]

~dnf @ pg 52~

DNF-ing this. I'm not really vibing with the book. The characters and their stories are great, but the writing isn't working for me. Jane's chapters are in first person, and Fiona's chapters are in third person, alternating between past and present which makes it harder to read. They are also not in chronological order. Maybe I will read it sometime later, but its unlikely.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5] When I started this book, I was hoping for a cohesive narrative about two women and their friendship. Instead, I got a series of snapshots from childhood to adulthood - without the completeness of short stories or the flow of a novel. Ho plays with the timeline and expects the reader to fill in the blanks. Although neither Fiona nor Jane are fully fleshed out, the fluctuations of friendship as the girls grow up and move apart are exquisitely rendered. My reading experience wavered between 3 and 4 stars - but I woke up thinking about Fiona and Jane. So 4 stars.

[Bianca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be right up my alley, as I love immigrant and queer stories.
Alas, this felt flat and generic and I just couldn't bring myself to finish it, so I gave up around the 45% mark.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling narrative about the intimacy of girlhood and coming of age and trauma

[lady h · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this started out promising, unfortunately it devolved into what was a largely disjointed and shallow narrative. The best thing I can say about it is that the writing is solid and the interconnected short story format makes the book fast-paced.

Ostensibly, this is supposed to be a book about Fiona and Jane's friendship, but that relationship is hugely underdeveloped; Fiona and Jane both have more intimate relationships with various men in their lives than they do with each other. They flit in and out of each others' lives and never seem to have any significant moments together; we are constantly told they are best friends and are simply expected to believe it without being shown any tangible proof. So much else about the book is similarly shallow and underdeveloped; subplots that were supposed to hit hard never did, because they felt so superficial and on-the-nose. These various tragic subplots were seemingly thrown in haphazardly, for no good reason at all, and never properly explored.

I also found certain narrative choices to be absolutely bizarre; why were Fiona's chapters all in third person while Jane's were in first? Oh, except for one random chapter that suddenly had Jane in third person? Why did we need that brief interlude featuring the perspective of Jasper, Fiona's boyfriend? Why were the short stories told out of order? Why did we get so few scenes of Fiona and Jane actually spending time together?

Ultimately, this fell very flat for me, particularly towards the final chapters, which would randomly introduce new characters into the narrative. Perhaps it's the fault of the short story format, but I feel like a more skilled author would have been able to make better use of this vignette style.

[Tiernan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a delightful, thoughtful, and unexpected first read of the year. Jean Chen Ho's writing is beautiful in a really grounded, non-sentimental way which is rare and dare I say refreshing??? I am also a sucker for stories that take place over many years and follow characters through many chapters of their lives. This is all of the emotion without any of the fussiness you might expect from a book like that. I want morrrre!

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great novel in stories on two friends following several arcs across decades.

This doesn't quite follow a traditional structure. Sometimes we stop moving forward in time. Sometimes we shift away from the titular characters' point of view. But this really works with the narrative, which feels alive and spontaneous.

While their friendship is the center, they get to have very separate arcs that sometimes cause friction. Jane deals with lingering guilt over the death of her father and is tied to her family in a way Fiona is not. Fiona is hyper-aware of class, feeling a need to achieve and succeed even when she doesn't really want to because of her modest upbringing. As they get older, romantic partnerships become more of a wedge between them. And yet this isn't a book where they fight in big dramatic scenes. Mostly these things just pass without either acknowledging their issues directly to the other, just as so many friendships leave their biggest conflicts unsaid. It lets each of them really come through individually even as their friendship remains a uniting thread.

I would have been happy if this had been twice as long. I felt like I was really just getting to dive into these characters deeply and I wanted to know what would happen to them next.

I also appreciated Jane as a character who, if I recall correctly, never really pins down her sexual identity. She definitely identifies as queer and friends refer to her as a lesbian though she sleeps with men and women, and sometimes seems to lean more towards one or the other.

[Jerrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the individual stories were generally good, they really were just a collection of stories featuring the two characters and not at all linked as the blurb on the book suggests. The stories are mainly about the characters’ relationships with their parents or their various lovers. There was nothing here that dealt with the friendship between the two title characters.

[Kemunto Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Did you love him?”
“No. I thought I did. But that wasn’t love,” he said. “That was something else.”

Note to self: This isn’t the book to read when you want to escape reality. As soon as I got to the quarter mark, I wanted to be done with all this. Such a sad book, with characters who remind you that life is still so hard, so painful. Fast paced, which means the sadness of the people here is never explained fully, just mentioned. As a reader, you have to quickly get over it because the book is already moving on! (Just like life sometimes💗)

Unfortunately I wanted to forget about life but this ended up reminding me that wait a minute, you’re alive.

Still, 3 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Tammie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm genuinely baffled by the low ratings for this book because I absolutely loved it?? I can certainly see how the marketing/blurb for this book is a bit misleading by placing such a heavy focus on the friendship aspect but I personally thought it was a beautiful exploration of two young women who became friends because of their shared heritage, but grew apart as they became adults. It's heartbreaking at times and intensely relateable, and I loved the writing. This was so compulsively readable to me, and I really highly recommend it if you're someone who enjoys these types of slice of life stories.

[therese · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title and synopsis for this book made it seem like it was going to be a story about female friendship. That's not really what this book is about at all. In fact, once they leave high school, we hardly even seen Fiona and Jane interact. We barely get any insight into their friendship. I'm not sure why they're friends or why the remain friends once their lives take them in different directions. They're just two female characters whose lives are vaguely intertwined. We spend a lot of time learning about their relationships with various men (boyfriend, fathers, male friends, etc.) but little time on their relationship with each other. For a story meant to be about the friendship between two women, there were way too many men.

This is written as a series of short stories rather than a continuous narrative. I think this structure could have worked well for a slice-of-life novel about female friendship. Unfortunately, I just found it sort of grating and confusing in Fiona and Jane. Jane's chapters are told in first person, while Fiona's are told in third. This felt like an odd choice that added nothing. Additionally, in one of Fiona's chapters, we get a long section that is essentially from the point of view of her ex-boyfriend. Why? For what? I really hated that bit. The last thing that irked me about the structure is that the timeline is not linear. The stories do not progress in chronological order. They jump around in time in a way that forced me to play Nancy Drew each chapter to figure out where in the timeline the story fell. My personal preference would have been for the stories to be told chronologically and consistently in first person (with no visiting narrative from an ex-boyfriend).

I did find the characters compelling. At least, I found Jane compelling. Fiona less so, but that's primarily because most of her chapters focus on men and her love life. We never really learn what Fiona wants besides a boyfriend. I really appreciated Jane's friendship with Won, and I thought Jean Chen Ho did a great job at crafting a sweet friendship filled with understanding and inside jokes between the two of them. (Their running bit where they pretended that the other one was in love with them was one of my favorite parts and felt like a very realistic interaction between friends.) Jane also had a very interesting relationship with her parents that was both heartbreaking and heartwarming at times. It sometimes felt a bit like Fiona was just a side character in Jane's story, as Jane felt much more fleshed out. My favorite chapter/story in the whole book is one about Fiona, Jane, and Won beginning to drink for the first time as teenagers. I though the relationship dynamics really shone in this story and that it was a good portrayal of the feelings and situations that come up when you're a teenager. If every story had been more like this, I would have enjoyed the book more.

Overall, this was decent but underwhelming. The writing is serviceable with brief moments of being really great. There are interesting threads but the overall narrative feels a bit empty and pointless. I'm not really sure what this book is trying to say about friendship or anything else. I think sometimes authors can go off the deep end and get overly saccharine and soppy when discussing female friendship, but this went the opposite direction and ended up just feeling hollow. (Except for the ending, which was way too corny and unearned.) However, I do think Jean Chen Ho is talented, and I will definitely check out her future works. Also, I am in love with this cover.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and compelling collection of short stories about two best friends as they move through life grappling through different situations. A collection of memories and moments between the two, this book shines a beautiful light on the importance of friendship, the good, the bad, and everything in between. As the two best friends (since second grade) grow, their lives do as well. They grow apart and reconnect. This book shows a raw and beautiful story of a true friendship, incorporating themes such as sexuality and identity.

Ok, so, I always read other reviews to sort of wrap my head around my idea of the book to see what I left in and what I didn't. Most people say they didn't enjoy this.

A lot of people say that they felt something was missing, a piece that felt like could have been there and it would have been better tenfold. I agree...slightly. Although I do think there were some things that should have been put in, I wouldn't say it was inherently bad.

In fact, I quite enjoyed this. I thought it was a wholesome comfort read that I definitely will be reading again soon. The stories were nice and sweet. Nothing too special about any of them. Although they were non-chronological, it didn't bother me too much. Many said they didn't like it like that, but I thought it was fine.

However, I do have to side with the people that did not enjoy this and say I do think that there were still some major parts that were left out. First of all, I think that the character development was very quick and didn't have time to grow. We know the characters are friends...best friends...but that's it. Not much in between. I would have liked this much more if we could have gotten a bit more development. Second of all, I think that it would have been much cooler if Jean Chen Ho explored more of the Taiwanese culture into this. It already played a major role, but it would have been really nice to see these two connect more to their Taiwanese heritage. Of course it’s not my place to tell anyone how to or not to write their culture in any shape or form, I’m merely saying it would have been very cool to see it branch out and explore more of it.


all in all: this was a good, quick read. for literary fiction and short stories lovers.

[Zoe Giles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book follows Fiona and Jane, two Taiwanese American girls, as they both travel through life from childhood to adulthood. It’s not so much about their friendship as it is about following the lives of these two individual women and their friendship is a thread that ebbs and flows throughout the story as they grow apart and come back together at the different stages of their lives

This book has made me realise I want to read more books that centre female friendships as a main theme, and I think it was very cleverly done here. The lives of these two women were very realistic with dreams and plans failing, life rerouting in a number of sad and unexpected ways, break ups, make ups, messy nights and unexpected joys. At times they were as close as sisters and each other’s whole worlds and at times they were virtually strangers. At times they’d shown up for each other when they most needed, at others they let each other down. It was very realistic which is what made it so gripping. There was one line that really got to me:

“She paused again and held me in her gaze, soft as anything. I almost hated her then. I wanted to look away, but something made me stay there. Her eyes. All the years between us. I was protected, under her gaze.”

It was definitely a book that was more about the vibes than the plot, but I was liking those vibes

I’d probably give it a 3.5 overall

[Aki · Rating 1 out of 5]

BOTM pick for January 2022 1/2

A pretentious coming of age novel that doesn’t stand out from any other contemporary novel on the market.

For being a story revolving around friendship, Fiona and Jane had no chemistry and hardly any history outside of attending k-12 together. You couldn’t even really say they shared any of their cultural heritage either. It was altogether shallow and unconvincing.

The disjointed timelines also didn’t do this book any favors. The writing was a mess. And what was with the random chapter from Jasper’s point of view?

I’m still trying to figure out what the point of telling these two girls’ stories was. It didn’t really come to any sort of satisfying conclusion, no moral, nothing gleaned.

[Larry H · Rating 3 out of 5]

This debut collection by Jean Chen Ho contains interconnected stories about friendship, love, family, relationships, and being caught between two cultures.

Fiona and Jane met in second grade, two Taiwanese girls living in California. Both were raised by their mothers—Fiona never knew her father, while Jane’s father went back to Taiwan for a teaching job. While they want nothing more than to be “normal” Americans, at times their mothers’ expectations are a little too much to bear.

These interconnected stories follow Fiona and Jane through their teenage years, years of some rebellion, sexual awakening, and intermittent tensions in their friendship, into adulthood, tracing their various relationships, careers, and connections with their mothers and each other. Each story is narrated through one of their perspectives.

The stories flip through time so it always took me a minute or two to orient me. (I’d say, “wait, didn’t she already move to New York?”) Some are more compelling stories than others—for the most part I found Jane a more interesting and dynamic person than Fiona.

What I found most fascinating is that while Fiona and Jane is promoted as stories about a friendship, other than a few stories, there’s barely any interaction between Fiona and Jane. Perhaps someone will ask about the other in passing, or one (Jane, probably) will reflect on not having spoken to the other in some time. I get that friendships drift apart but this felt a little odd to me.

All things considered, this was an interesting and well-written collection of stories which made me ponder my own friendships.

Check out my list of the best books I read in 2021 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2021.html.

See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.

Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/.

[Christine Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Gregory Duke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to ask myself why I read this and why I kept reading? It's a totally trite debut that does nothing particularly interesting except provide the publishing world with a new perspective (in this case, queer Taiwanese women). That's all fine and dandy, but what is this book??? It's title and synopsis make it seem like it's about friendship over time, yet there's so little shown of Fiona and Jane in the same space that it feels like the novel is positing more so a narrative about two women growing up and having troubles with men. It's all about men. Infidelity, erectile dysfunction jokes, reflections (reflection is a strong word. I probably mean barebones representation/observation) on the fetishization of Asian women by men of all types, rocky parental relationships that continue to be positive, and class (it's present but totally underdeveloped beyond Fiona is poor and Jane is upper-middle class and nothing else). The first few chapters are the strongest, so it really just keeps kind of devolving beyond already being easily forgettable. It entertains in the moment and proceeds to mildly agitate and dissipate entirely.

[jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Told in alternating chapters and a non-linear timeline, we weave through the different stages of Fiona and Jane's life: how they first met, set apart and reconnected in adulthood.

Fiona is a born Taiwanese and migrated to the US with her parents. Later, her dad flew back to Taiwan for a particular reason. The action tears the family apart. On the other hand, Jane is an American born Taiwanese. Her family is coping with financial stress, which shapes her to have inferior towards others.

The friendship between Fiona and Jane is familiar and melancholy. We know how often relationships are built through similarities and loneliness. Both characters are Asian Americans and spend time together escaping their given identities. They party, they drink, they smoke and they return to their respective lives after the night ends.

I saw reviewers are disappointed that the story doesn't spend much time of them together. However, isn't that how most relationships work? While we left our past behind, we depart from our closed ones as well. But the time spent together shapes us into who we are today.

It's a short story that includes a small cast of side characters. The readers don't get much time about their lives. Thus, these side characters felt vague, the aspect of diversity felt too convenient. Also, the non-linear timeline can get confusing at times.

Fiona and Jane is a note on female friendships. The story recalls all my high school memories. How funny that a partner in crime is a total stranger today. Yet, a part of them remains with us.

Rating: 4 stars

[Cindy Wilkerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started FIONA AND JANE on the 31st and forced myself to put it down because I didn’t want it in my December stats. Because I sensed it had potential to be a top read and I had already posted my top reads for 2021. Because it was that good!!

The brilliance was in the novel’s structure. Fiona and Jane have been best friends since 2nd grade but we see them together mostly in memories or reflections of the past. Yet in this non linear narrative, we still get the sense of how much they meant to each other, and how much they still mean to each other. Each chapter is vignette, a little piece inside their lives.

It was queer. It touched on racism and micro aggressions, and being Taiwanese American. It showed generational trauma. How we learn to forgive ourselves. But what I loved most was how it showed relationships, both romantic and platonic, in a beautiful, raw way.

This was the type of book that reminded me why I love literary fiction so much. Buy it. Request it from your library. Choose it as your botm pick. It is that good!!

[Leah Rachel von Essen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho is a vivid contemporary recounting the lives of two childhood best friends, both young Taiwanese American women in very different homes. It tells of their growth together and apart over the years. It is technically told in short stories, but I read it like a novel and really enjoyed it that way.

I really loved this one—it was the perfect airplane/beach read, touching and serious but a quick read. Fiona Lin and Jane Shen grow up together in Los Angeles, and they have a really convincing and compelling friendship. As the two of them go through grief, heartbreak, manipulative relationships, hope, pain, they float in and out of each other's lives, with all those mixed feelings that a childhood friendship carries with it. One of them is close to their mother, one of them estranged from her, one of them leaves, one of them stays, one of them grew up in a stable well-off home, the other moved throughout her childhood, one of them is queer, one isn't. They circle each other, support each other, fight, drift, and ultimately come back together.

Didn't love its final sentences (a little corny) but other than that, it was an excellent read that's going to be a big hit on its release in 2022. I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Fiona and Jane comes out January 2.

[Justice Simanek · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately, the longer I read this book, the more I disliked it. It started off really strong, after the first few "stories" I was excited to keep going. However, the more I got into it the more I began questioning the characterization, the format of the novel, what exactly Chen Ho's goal was when writing this book.

First, marketing this book as a short story collection is misleading. The book does have longer chapters that are non-linear and switch between Fiona and Jane. But, for me, a short story needs to stand on its own. These "stories" were dependent on the story that came before and after it, and the stories did not have the traditional story arc one would expect from a short story, meaning the end of each story wasn't really a solid conclusion, but just the end of a chapter.

Jane's story is told in first-person while Fiona's is in third-person. I found this more jarring than helpful to distinguish what character's head we were in. At one point we even jump into the head of Fiona's ex-boyfriend for the majority of a Fiona chapter and it was just...odd. I had no idea why it was necessary to hear his perspective. Also, toward the end of the book, a Jane chapter randomly switched to third-person. Whether it was an oversight in editing or on purpose, it was a decision that made me stop and ask "Wait? Who is this?" and not a helpful artistic choice.

For a book revolving solely around the friendship of these two women, we barely got any time with them interacting as friends. Both the characters themselves and the friendship barely had any development from page 1 to page 271. While Fiona and Jane had a rough patch, the majority of the book was spent with them not speaking to each other. Once we did get them talking again, it was as if the rough patch never even happened. The characters barely grew from the situation and were acting just as they were in high school.

Also, the fatphobia in this book was...ridiculous. Characters who were supposed to be seen as unsuccessful or unhappy were usually fat or described as fat. At one point Fiona puts her lover on a diet because Jane thinks he's getting fat. It's 2022, I don't know why we're still doing this.

The writing was just fine. The dialogue between Fiona, Jane, and Won was distracting and did not seem believable at all. The conversations with Fiona and Jane's boyfriends were ones I just did not care about. There were several plot points that I didn't care for, but I won't go into them here.

Overall, I think Fiona and Jane is written and described as a short story collection because there is not enough characterization or depth to call it a fully-realized novel. I did not care for any character at all, which can be purposeful in some instances, but I don't think that was the intention here.

Thank you to Viking for (two) advanced finished copies in exchange for an honest review. I'm hoping the person I gifted the second copy to enjoys it more than I did.

[jenny✨]

this was gifted to me by my dear friend andie, who trekked to Yu and Me Books, chose this for me, and shipped it from east to west coast.

with all my heart: thank you, andie! because of you, this novel will always hold a cherished space in my heart.

[Camelia Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fiona and Jane is Jean Chen Ho’s debut novel. It consists of several snapshots of Fiona and Jane’s life. A lot of dialogues. Reads like a study case of Show, Don’t Tell.

The upside: life-long friendship between two Taiwannese women, their bonding sometimes strong, sometimes loose, but dependable and never broken. Does the author intend to make Fiona and Jane a mini version of Lenù and Lila in My Brilliant Friends?

The downside: The snapshots style does not work for me. It is neither a short story collection or novel. I like parent-children relationships and family dramas but not the never-ending romantic misgivings.