Emma Nanami Strenner taps into the world of adoptions and origins stories throughout her coming-of- age novel, My Other Heart, focusing on what it means to build a family, miss out on the lives of your loved ones, and question your identity. The work follows Kit, an adopted teenager that has never known anything but privilege, her best friend Sabrina, their families and their community as they explore the transition into adulthood after graduating high school. As the summer speeds along, secrets are revealed that threaten to tear apart families forever and it’s up to them to nurture the relationships they’ve held near to them for their whole lives.

It becomes clear very early on in the work that the two teenagers lead drastically different lives despite having been friends for a long time, highlighting the class differences that exist in their native Philadelphia. Kit, having been adopted as a young child, enjoys the privileges of coming from a wealthy family, while Sabrina lives at the poverty line. This divide is most prevalent when they share their summer plans— Sabrina plans to go abroad to Tokyo, while Kit stays home to enjoy the last few months of living at home before heading off to college, but circumstances keep that from happening as the audience is exposed to just how much the girls differ in the way that they were raised and the worlds they find themselves in on a daily basis. 

The method in which the author uses to create the story alternates viewpoints between most of the major characters throughout the story, allowing for the audience to see the same events from different viewpoints, thus giving the reader a more well-rounded approach to the story than that of the characters; in doing so, Strenner is able to fully capture the moments that fully alter the storyline in a way that gives the audience space to reflect on how the events of the world are making them feel. The story is especially endearing towards the end because it forces the audience to excessive empathy for the characters whose lives were upended due to unforeseen circumstances, perhaps serving as a metaphor for the audiences’ own lives. 

In addition to a writing style that is both extremely concise and detailed, the audiences are met with complicated interpersonal relationships that reflect those seen in other media; however, the way that these are presented within My Other Heart asks the question of what it means to truly value friendship and familial love. The lessons learned by the characters throughout this work are some of the most valuable lessons that people can learn, and allowing the audience to experience such a phenomenon from the outside showcases the mastery of language needed to successfully pull of a work such as this; in other words, this book is one of the five-star reads I can see myself recommending in the future, so major props to the author on such a fantastic debut.