dear twin

In Dear Twin, Poppy wants to go to college like everyone else, but her father has other ideas. Ever since Poppy’s twin sister, Lola, mysteriously vanished, Poppy’s father has been deeply saddened by Lola’s absence and forces Poppy to stick around.

Having always felt a strong sense of responsibility for Lola’s happiness and well-being, especially after witnessing the abuse Lola endured during their childhood, she hopes she can convince Lola to come home, and perhaps also procure her freedom, by sending Lola a series of nineteen letters, one for each year of their lives.

When not submerged in the most traumatic memories of her childhood, Poppy sneaks away with Juniper, her secret love and sole source of comfort. But negotiating the complexities of queer love and childhood trauma are anything but simple. And as a twin? That’s a whole different story.

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praise for dear twin

Deeply contemplative and poetic, Addie Tsai’s Dear Twin is soft and unabashedly queer.

When Poppy Uzumaki’s twin sister disappears, Poppy begins writing her letters in the hopes of finding not only her sister, but also forgiveness and closure. At eighteen, Poppy longs to escape to a brighter future with her girlfriend Juniper but feels locked in place, wrestling with not only her own demons but also those of her grudging father and her wayward sister. Tsai deftly navigates the complicated feelings of sisterhood, twinhood, and sharing a face and part of your soul with someone, and how that changes when they disappear. Dear Twin is an unwavering look at finding love and happiness and overcoming the pervasive idea that you don’t deserve either.

—CB Lee
Author of Not Your Sidekick

Dear Twin is the most terrifying book I’ve read in years.

Addie Tsai has rendered a world blisteringly similar to the one we live in where acceptance of one’s biography and queerness does not come easy. Dear Twin is the story of twins, the story of desire, the story of writing, and most importantly the story of eyes and bodies. It is rare that a book is as equally horrifying as it is beautiful, rigorous as it is readable, quiet as it is spectacular, but that is just what Tsai has created in Dear Twin. I have never read anything quite like it.

—Kiese Laymon
Author of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America

In Dear Twin, debut novelist Addie Tsai offers readers a trenchant, unflinchingly honest, and startlingly funny emotional roller coaster that takes us deep beneath the surface of a young queer woman of colour’s life – and into the complexities of intimate violence in its many forms.

Dear Twin explores the meanings of childhood, siblinghood, sexuality and survivorhood, defying reader expectations and rejecting simple binaries every step of the way. This book is a loving subversion of the YA genre. Read it and feel your heart crack open in all the best ways.”

—Kai Cheng Thom
Author of Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars:
A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir