Review: Heiress Apparently - Diana Ma

Review: Heiress Apparently - Book #1 Daughters of the Dynasty Series - Diana Ma - December 2020

Growing up in a Chinese American family, Gemma has always preferred to be a bit of a rebel daughter. Her mother is a Museum Director and her dad a Professor. Gemma wishes to take a year off and try her hand at acting in LA. What will happen though when Gemma is given a chance of a lifetime to star in a new film and gets the lead role as well? She agrees but will discover something that doesn't play in her favor - the filming is in Beijing, China. Growing up, Gemma's mum always warned her to stay well away from Beijing and that stepping foot in the city was forbidden. With the help of her roommates back home in LA, she lies to her parents and tells them she is filming in Nebraska, etc. When Gemma arrives in Beijing though, she is immediately accosted by paparazzi and people screaming at her. She later discovers that a Beijing socialite Alyssa Chua looks identical to her and could be her twin sister. As the book goes along, we learn that family secrets were kept hidden from Gemma about her mother's side of the family and the real reasons that Gemma was to never step foot into Beijing. It was interesting reading this book as I learned a bit from the author as I have not read any books set within the Asian culture and it shows how far the world has come in perceptions as of course gay marriage, gender-bending, etc has become so acceptable in Chinese culture. We also saw however the opposite end of the scale where despite progressing in a lot of parts, China's media, etc is still very much controlled as Gemma calls it in this book "The Great Firewall of China" when she keeps getting errors and 404 messages on Google searches. I found myself enjoying this book more than I thought I would and I think a huge part was the whole doppelganger trope as that is one of my top ten tropes to read about. The other thing I did enjoy was that even though it was fictionalized was learning about parts of the Chinese History and culture from the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre to the Communist Party and Labour camps also during this time and before.  If you love books with doppelgangers, secrets, and history - then check out Heiress Apparently by Diana Ma today.


Amazon: https://amzn.to/2PyKHSC