This is a strangely tense novel in which nothing much happens to people who appear to be cutouts of more interesting characters. It is also a horror story told from the perspective of 'Chanel' Lei Ling about being an immigrant outcast with a tiger mother (Jing Fei). The catch? Lei Ling is neither smart nor talented enough to wriggle herself free.

It's only through the deus ex machina of her rich friend's death, at which she's given a hefty inheritance, that gives her any hope for the future at all.

Lei Ling is a sympathetic character: her Chinese-Malaysian mother uses abuse (both verbal and physical) in the hope that a browbeating will make her daughter better; her school life is lacklustre with a single weakly connected friend and a small team of mean girls as bullies, one of whom is her ethnic rival, the wealthy Angela. She can't escape through academic success and her violin skills are mediocre at best.

So why does Gigi, Angela's aunt, taking a liking to this girl? When Gigi spots the lonely Lei Ling at Angela's birthday party – a big blowout one where the whole school is invited – it's ostensibly because she can see Lei Ling is struggling and decides to "help" her by teaching her about the finer things in life and becoming a sugar aunty in the process. But the prologue – written in the first person but certainly not Lei Ling's – hints at the real story, one that's revealed by the end of the book but becomes obvious the first time Jing Fei encounters Gigi.

Unfortunately the mildly interesting premise isn't helped by a bunch of flat characters. It's not enough to sympathise or empathise with Lei Ling. Much of her characterisation is quite pedestrian and she lacks an interior life that helps us understand who she is beyond what other people want her to be (that she is currently failing at being). 

Gigi is similarly flat. She's a rich single lesbian heiress, benevolent to Lei Ling and, by the end of the novel,

dead

. There's no hint about why she enjoys Lei Ling's company, other than treating her as a project and, only later,

there's the theory that she's using Lei Ling to atone for how she treated Jing Fei in the past

.

To be honest the most interesting characters are Jing Fei and Angela but Jing Fei is reduced to a horribly harsh tiger mother stereotype, with only hints at a fascinating backstory revealed way too late in the narrative, and Angela is merely a rich girl school bully until the end as well.

The other aspect I didn't get was just how much the same set of things happen. Gigi takes Lei Ling out on excursions; Lei Ling is bullied at school but never tells anyone; Lei Ling lies to Jing Fei about Gigi's excursions; and Jing Fei browbeats her 'worthless' daughter – over and over. 

There is one set of stakes in the novel: Lei Ling's audition for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Junior Program. We know she won't get in because we've been told in many different ways that she's mediocre at the violin, but we're along for the ride when she practises and frets over the audition and, crucially, we want to know how the process will change her when she fails. After a build-up of several chapters involving practice, practice, practice, a broken bow and Jing Fei berating Lei Ling for not being good enough, and then an extended scene waiting for the audition, we get one paragraph about the actual audition. No insight about the performance follows, only questions pertaining to the whereabouts and lack of support from Jing Fei (who leaves Lei Ling in the the waiting room) and Gigi, who's there for Angela but ignores Lei Ling. An absolute waste of stakes and no real lesson that Lei Ling learns from the experience.

Lei Ling has the bones of a good character. Although she and Angela seem to come to a truce at the end of the novel, I would've loved to have seen her make friends, or at least allies in different areas – Kumon or violin lessons, for example – to make those activities more enjoyable and so she could expand her same-age friendships beyond the nebulous one she has with Emily at school.

Overall, I felt this story didn't know what it wanted to be. It was not quite enough about Gigi and Jing Fei to be about how the past can influence the present, but also not well shaped towards Lei Ling learning about friendship in different forms, nor any real coming of age epiphany you might expect from a 13yo protagonist

whose adult friend dies

. I wanted to like this book but it really didn't reach far enough to be satisfying in any meaningful way.