Featured-1800×1200@2x-100-scaled (1)

Reading lists

Debut novels of 2025: discover the year’s breakthrough new voices

Emma Nanami Strenner

A magical read ... that'll break your heart then put it back together again

I am bereft to have finished it! From the suburbs of Philadelphia to the streets of Saigon, I was completely immersed in the lives of these very special characters. I loved it.

A mesmerising novel filled with different types of love and secrets from the past, My Other Heart is an exploration of identity, motherhood, and friendship. Emma Nanami Strenner's luminous debut follows three unforgettable women as they search for truth and belonging. Poignant and powerful, this is a novel that lingers long after the final page

Jean Kwok, author of 'Girl in Translation'

My heart was captured by this gorgeous book. My Other Heart is one of those novels that gets its hooks into you and doesn't let go. A beautifully told story of family, identity, loss and belonging

Jennie Godfrey, No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of 'The List of Suspicious Things'

Beautifully written and accomplished

Nussaibah Younis, author of 'Fundamentally'

Two complex, shimmering young women burst from the pages of My Other Heart, authentic and full of life. I fell in love with Kit and Sabrina, their flawed but caring mothers, and Emma Nanami Strenner's beautiful words

Jessica Stanley, author of 'Consider Yourself Kissed'

I’m grateful to Emma Nanami Strenner for this story of two young Asian-American women, who grapple with big questions of culture and social class, while also navigating the everyday complexities of friendship, love, and daughterhood. My Other Heart offers no pat or easy answers, thank goodness. Instead, Sabrina and Kit learn that identity isn’t always simple and that only they can answer the question of who they are and to what world—or worlds--they want to belong

Marisa de los Santos, New York Times bestselling author of 'Love Walked In'

I've never read anything quite like Emma Nanami Strenner's My Other Heart: gorgeous, devastating, equally joyous and heartbreaking. Weaving three disparate lives across years and thousands of miles, it recounts the ripple effect expanding from a single, fateful day in the past, spinning an ecosystem of pain and memory around it. Reaching the end of Sabrina, Kit, and Mimi's story was like taking in a gasp of air after spending a minute underwater.

My Other Heart is a wise, well observed, and transporting debut that explores what it means to belong. At once an immersive coming of age novel and an unflinching study of race, class, and manners, it confronts loneliness, cowardice, the quest for self-acceptance, and the effort required to truly see one another - even the people we think we're closest to - head-on. Sabrina Chen is an unforgettable heroine. I was on her side from start to finish.

Emma Knight, New York Times bestselling author of 'The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus'

A story that probes questions of identity, how we all have an idea of who we are. But it excels as a portrait of young women finding their way in the world ... A terrific, nuanced portrayal of female friendship and first loves - it really threw me back to the agony and the ecstasy. Clever, poignant and gripping, what a combination

A beautiful coming-of-age story ... With universal themes of identity, friendship, love and motherhood, everyone will see a little part of themselves in the characters

For fans of The Vanishing Half and Little Fires Everywhere, a sweeping and heartfelt debut about finding your roots across borders and beyond blood-ties 
 
'A magical read ... that will break your heart then put it back together again' Stylist Book of the Month 
 
'I am bereft to have finished it! From the suburbs of Philadelphia to the streets of Saigon, I was completely immersed in the lives of these very special characters. I loved it.' EMILY ITAMI, author of Fault Lines 
 
'A beautifully told story of family, identity, loss and belonging' JENNIE GODFREY, No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The List of Suspicious Things 
 
'Poignant and powerful, this is a novel that lingers long after the final page' JEAN KWOK, author of Girl in Translation 
 
'Beautifully written and accomplished' NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS, author of Fundamentally 
 
'Authentic and full of life' JESSICA STANLEY, author of Consider Yourself Kissed 
 
May 1998: Mimi Traung and her baby daughter Ngan wait restlessly at the gates of Philadelphia airport. There is still a day’s travelling left before they would land back home on Vietnamese soil. While they prepare to board, the unimaginable happens. 
 
Seventeen years later, two best friends are discussing their summer plans before college over a piece of mooncake. Both have trips ahead in search of their roots: Sabrina is preparing to travel to China to meet her mother’s family. Kit leaves for Tokyo, convinced that her biological mother is Japanese. Their parents watch on from the quiet suburbs of Chestnut Hill, nervous of what their daughters might find. 
 
Meanwhile, Mimi returns to Philadelphia in search of her lost child, tracing memories from that fateful day waiting at the gates. Each of these women are looking to find their place in the world. Eventually Mimi, Kit and Sabrina come face to face, and have to confront the people they truly are, dismantling their own assumptions about belonging and the importance of blood ties. 
 
WHAT READERS ARE SAYING 
'An unflinching exploration of Asian-American identity, discrimination, adoption, and classism.' 
'An emotional whirlwind ... A magnificent coming-of-age novel' 
'At times heartbreaking and other times joyfully life-affirming ... This is a novel that spans decades and continents, yet remains deeply intimate and moving' 
'The type of book you can't put down' 
'A rights of passage tale with a twist'

Emma Nanami Strenner

Praise for My Other Heart

A magical read ... that'll break your heart then put it back together again

I am bereft to have finished it! From the suburbs of Philadelphia to the streets of Saigon, I was completely immersed in the lives of these very special characters. I loved it.

A mesmerising novel filled with different types of love and secrets from the past, My Other Heart is an exploration of identity, motherhood, and friendship. Emma Nanami Strenner's luminous de ...

A magical read ... that'll break your heart then put it back together again

I am bereft to have finished it! From the suburbs of Philadelphia to the streets of Saigon, I was completely immersed in the lives of these very special characters. I loved it.

A mesmerising novel filled with different types of love and secrets from the past, My Other Heart is an exploration of identity, motherhood, and friendship. Emma Nanami Strenner's luminous de ...

A magical read ... that'll break your heart then put it back together again

I am bereft to have finished it! From the suburbs of Philadelphia to the streets of Saigon, I was completely immersed in the lives of these very special characters. I loved it.

A mesmerising novel filled with different types of love and secrets from the past, My Other Heart is an exploration of identity, motherhood, and friendship. Emma Nanami Strenner's luminous de ...

Articles featuring Emma Nanami Strenner

Debut novels of 2025: discover the year’s breakthrough new voices

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter