The Original Daughter follows the story of two cousins who were brought up as sisters. Gen, the original daughter, does not manage to get out of her working-class family home, whereas Arin, the cousin who was adopted by Gen's parents, becomes a famous movie star. This novel examines the ruthless competitiveness of modern Singaporean society and complex family relationships.

I absolutely adored the first half or so of this novel. Gen is a very unlikable narrator, but her voice is compelling, and it is difficult to put the book down. I don't normally enjoy coming of age stories, but Wei manages to make the simple story of growing up poor in Singapore engrossing and engaging. Gen navigates her school life and friendships, doing everything expected of her, and yet she fails, and is robbed of opportunities and options open to anyone with more money than her. Her relationship with both of her parents is complicated and full of nuances, expertly illuminated by Wei's precise prose.

The second half of the novel somewhat shifts the focus from the broader Singaporean society encapsulated in this one family to the more intimate and specific relationship between Gen and Arin. This is not to say that Arin is absent in the first half, or that the second half somehow stops engaging with broader social and political issues (the whole healthcare sequence is harrowing), but the balance between the two changes. I am not sure if that worked too well. Although the core relationship is interesting and multi-faceted, reminiscent of some of the best dynamics between women in fiction (looking at you, The Neapolitan Novels), in my opinion, Wei did not quite manage to make this a story of Gen and Arin. It is, instead, a story of Gen, where Arin functions as a narrative vehicle. Unlike Gen's parents (and even grandmothers), Arin remains an enigma till the very end. Her main function is to succeed, and it does not matter what she succeeds at. She might as well have been a high-flying corporate lawyer or an accomplished physician. I got little sense of her as a person, but, more importantly, I got little sense of her context (social media to movie star pipeline), in jarring contrast with the much more grounded and anchored story of Gen. As a result, what starts as quite an intriguing literary novel runs out of steam and descends into family saga-type commercial narrative by the last 30% or so. It is still worth reading, but I wish it was tighter edited.

3.5 stars

Apparently ten years in the writing, this was a more consciously literary novel than the above three and has the distinction of showing us the less-well-off residents of Singapore, seen part-way through the book as a shining example of cleanliness and lawfulness but an ordinary and tricky place to live for our main family. Gen is an only child living with her parents and grandmother when in 1996 a cousin is suddenly produced from her absconded grandfather's second family. Arin and Gen bond at first and study hard as the only way out of poverty, but we know it's going to end in a division as the first part of the book as Gen alone with her sick mum, Arin off being a film star. We take a long journey through the girls' education and early years, from 1996 to 2010 then dart back to 2015 at the end - of course the date makes sense when you think it took 10 years to write. I did find plenty to learn from but it was maybe a bit too long. The scenes in New Zealand were interesting as was Arin's careful transformation into another, different, "better"? person, and Gen is a resolutely difficult character, something I always quite like in a novel.

Blog review published 7 June: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2025/06/07/four-netgalley-reads-phillipa-ashley-hiro-arikawa-mo-fanning-jemimah-wei/

Beautiful and heartbreaking, this book explores what it means to succeed, love, and live. There were so many tender moments between Gen and her family, followed by absolutely gut wrenching decisions and arguments. This book was a perfect balance of sisterhood and its many flaws and indescribable grief. I loved the writing, it was breathtaking and full of emotion. Gen and Arin were such complex characters with so many possibilities, I’d happily read another 400 pages about them both. Truly a remarkable book.

I was so happy when I was sent an ARC for this book via Netgalley, I kept hearing about it and I thought it would be exactly the kind of books I like. And I was right.
In Singapore, we follow Genevieve Yang, who when the novel begins is looking after her dying mother, but the novel is a rewind and takes us to when Arin, her adopted sister, joined the family and their complicated relationship.
There were lots of themes I enjoy reading on novels: sisters, academic ambitions, complicated family relationships, finding oneself, rivalry... One trope I have seen recently and like is the "emotional vampire" using titbits from their loved ones' lives to feed their art (seen recently in Yellowface with Athena), I enjoyed seeing how Jemimah Wei uses it in The Original Daughter.
It was emotional, well-written, well-paced. I loved this novel and I can see it being a bestselling book.

A tender novel which probes the difficult relationship that sisterhood can be. Genevieve (Gen) is an only child until her half cousin Arin is forced upon the family abruptly following the death of their grandfather. Whilst they don't have much in the way of material possessions, the girls are clearly brought up in a loving environment and form a strong bond until cracks in the relationship start to appear during their teenage years.

As Gen narrates, we only ever get to hear her side of the story and I found it hard not to side with her at certain points though there were also times where I felt she was being blatantly unfair. The character development she went through did, however, redeem her by the end. The storytelling is full of raw emotion and entirely gripping.

I can't wait for this to be published so I can recommend it to others. It's been one of my favourite reads so far this year.

This is a wonderfully written novel about ambition, sisterhood and complex family relationships, set in Singapore. This is another debut novel I managed to read this week - it hasn’t actually been published in the UK just yet and I’m grateful for being able to read this early. I was primarily intrigued as it was set in Singapore and I thought I would be all nostalgic about that part of the world, but I found myself being rather emotional reading about the two sisters.⁣
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Before Arin turns up in her life, Genevieve Yang was an only child living with her parents and paternal grandmother in a single-room apartment in Bedok. One day, the family finds out that the grandfather, who was presumed dead during the war in Malaysia, had actually been alive all along and built a new family there before his death. His son from his second family has written a letter to Genevieve’s grandmother to request them to take his daughter, Arin, in so she can grow up in Singapore. The story spans many years, from 1996 to 2015.⁣
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The rest of the book then tells the story of how Genevieve and Arin grow up together, become best friends and depend on each other, knowing failure isn’t an option in the society they are living in. That was tough to read. ⁣
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“…We were children; with the narcissistic myopia of the young, we’d believed so wholly in our ability to affect things, to materialize schemes contrary to the machinations of adults. And when adults uncovered our plans, we attributed it to a kind of magical omniscience, rather than understanding that we’d been operating transparently within a goldfish bowl this entire time.”⁣
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One thing leads to another and before you know it, Arin gets all the spotlight and Genevieve starts being jealous and resentful. Without spoiling it much further, the sisters become estranged.⁣
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I enjoyed every part of the book and I thought it was such a wonderful, unusual read.