alexa play “jealousy, jealousy” by olivia rodrigo


This book follows Jenna Chen, a girl who, no matter how hard she tries, never manages to get what she wants, particularly when it comes to her studies. When she fails to get into Harvard, she wishes she could become her cousin Jessica, who is a top student and easily got into Harvard. When her wish comes true, Jenna is scared at first, but then starts realizing that she actually enjoys being Jessica, even if it means the real Jessica (as well as Jenna’s body) is gone.

It was interesting to see Jenna *loving* being Jessica. Having a beautiful body, a giant house, lots of money, constantly being praised by her friends, teachers and classmates, getting awards and accolades… The author did a really good job showing how intoxicating it was for Jenna to finally get everything she ever dreamed of, and it made sense why she didn’t want to go back to her old life.

I especially liked the way things wrapped up!

I liked that Jenna learned that Jessica’s life wasn’t that easy, and that Jessica herself was exhausted of all the pressure she was under, and the expectations people had of her. Seeing Jenna struggle with wishing for her life back, because, deep down, she doesn’t want it, was reeeeally intriguing, especially because she already experienced how hard it actually is to constantly get really high grades like Jessica did. The fact that, even then, Jenna still preferred to be Jessica, gave her a lot of depth. I also like that people were slowly forgetting who Jenna was, and that she learned to finally appreciate her life. And I LOVE that Jessica had ALSO wished to not be herself anymore, because of how tired she was of her life, which means that Jenna becoming Jessica had basically been BOTH of their wishes! I just thought that was all so interesting and well-done, and I’m glad that Jessica still had some depth, despite not really being in the book.

Overall, I think that Jenna’s internal struggles with her self-worth are the best part of this book, which is great, because this is the *main* point of the story.



The secondary storyline is the romantic one, which, unfortunately, didn’t really work for me. 😕 I REALLY liked the LI, Aaron – he is intelligent, attentive and extremely thoughtful, and his actions are always really well explained and make sense with his story. Overall, Aaron is a great LI and a really well-rounded character (that I actually would’ve liked to see more of).

The main problem with the romance is that most its development happened off-page, before the book even began. Jenna and Aaron had been friends for a while, and Jenna had a crush on him. At the start of the book, we find out that Aaron had left for some sort of school program right after he and Jenna had a falling out, so there’s a lot of tension when they reunite at the start of the story. It’s clear that Jenna still likes Aaron even though she’s also angry about their falling out.

Throughout the book we get 1 or 2 flashbacks to their friendship, but, mostly, we just get quick mentions of things they did with/for each other. We never actually SEE them fall in love; we’re just TOLD she fell for Aaron. We never really SEE them bond; we’re simply TOLD they had some nice moments together (all of which could just be attributed to friendship, btw).

It’s already hard to make the reader believe in a romance when the characters already like each other, because you have to do a good job establishing a romance that was fully developed before the story even began. If you don’t even bother to write out a lot of flashbacks, and just keep telling the reader that the characters had nice moments in 1 simple paragraph here or there, it becomes really hard to fully believe in the romance… 😐 The culmination of all of this was Aaron’s love speech, which mentioned so many things he likes about Jenna, 99% of which happened off-page before the book even began, which means we never saw or heard about most of them, so the entire speech felt hollow and unearned, which is a shame, because it was really cute! 😢

Don’t get me wrong, Jenna and Aaron are sweet, and their moments in the past seem really nice and show how much they care for each other! However, their relationship was based on telling, instead of showing, which made it hard for me to believe in their romance.

Another thing I didn’t love about their romance was the fact that their falling out was nonsensical. Basically,

Jenna tried to kiss Aaron, and he turned his head away, so she got angry at him and said “From now on, I hate you, Aaron. I seriously—I hate you so much.”…………????????????????? 🤨 I’m sorry, but getting mad at your best friend just because he didn’t reciprocate your feelings?????? That is fucking ridiculous. I get that she was hurt, but Jenna literally started acting like those dudes who get angry at their female friends when they friendzone them.

Aaron’s reasons for rejecting Jenna (despite liking her too) were actually really good – he really clocked her by saying that she likes to WANT things more than she likes HAVING them, and he simply didn’t want to be one of those things she quickly lost interest in. I REALLY like that explanation, because it shows that Aaron pays attention to Jenna’s actions and knows her well, and also shows him standing up for himself and calling Jenna out on her bullshit. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

  While I did like Aaron’s side of this conflict, Jenna’s was absurd. It was soooo uncomfortable to see Jenna constantly be angry at Aaron for no reason; she was literally acting like those terrible « Nice Guys™ », and it was just icky to me. 😬😬😬



There are a couple of other things that didn’t work for me:

➤ Jenna didn’t think about her parents that often and barely even visited them when she was Jessica (even though, in the end, she talks about how much she misses them).

➤ Her friendship with Leela was literally never established. She mentions they were friends, but we barely even see that, and, in the end, she doesn’t even mention missing her friendship with Leela, yet when she goes back to being Jenna, she goes and hugs Leela…. This friendship should’ve been established, and I wish it had been a bigger point in Jenna’s life.

➤ Overall, there was a bit too much telling instead of showing: with Jenna and Aaron’s romance, with Jenna and Leela’s supposed friendship (that was barely even mentioned, tbh), with Jenna’s life (at the end of the book she goes on and on for paragraphs talking about the things she misses, most of which we never saw. I wish the author had taken a bit longer to establish her life before the change, so we had seen some of those things). 🙁

➤ The adoration everyone has for Jessica felt very cartoonish. People literally walk around constantly talking about how great and gorgeous and perfect she is, and telling her how they wish they were like her. It became ridiculous. 🙄

➤ The author is advertising this as dark academia, but I don’t really see that, tbh. Yes, it is about a girl who wants to have good grades and be the best in her class, but *dark academia*??? Idk…



Despite these issues, I overall still enjoyed the book, and I’d definitely recommend it!

Thanks to HarperCollins and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of this book!