Reader Score
85%
85% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Good
Based on 5 reviews on
Jade isn't even my real name. Jade began as my Starbucks name, because all children of immigrants have a Starbucks name.
Jade has become everything she ever wanted to be. A successful lawyer. A dutiful daughter. A beloved girlfriend. A loyal friend. Until Jade wakes up the morning after a work event, naked and alone, with no idea how she got home. Caught between her parents who can't understand, her boyfriend who feels betrayed, and her job that expects silence, the perfect world Jade has constructed starts to crumble.
For fans of Queenie and I May Destroy You, Jaded is a "raw, dark" (Refinery29) account of consent, power, race, sexism, and identity in a broken society.
"This raw, dark novel explores racism, class and sexism and you'll want to savor every word on every page." -Refinery 29
"A thoughtful, unflinching examination of all of the ways in which women (especially women of color) conform to fit others' expectations, how damaging that can be, and the empowerment of subverting constraints." --Library Journal
"Lee's promising debut probes what happens when a British woman's carefully constructed persona shatters after she's sexually assaulted... untangling the complicated emotions wrapped up in Jade's evolving relationship with her parents, who fear she will lose hold of her material successes and grieve their home countries." --Publishers Weekly
"Debut novelist Lee deconstructs the aftermath of sexual assault in this lucid coming-of-age novel.... Jaded is a painful story with hefty emotion and is sure to spark conversations about consent, race, and success."--Booklist
"Wonderfully multi-faceted and emotionally compelling."--JESSICA GEORGE, New York Times bestselling author of Maame
"Jaded is a thoughtful, hard-hitting exploration of race, identity, and the rippling effects of sexual assault. Ela Lee writes with an urgency and clarity that will have you hooked until the last page."--CECILE PIN, author of Wandering Souls
"Jaded is a sharp, bold and compulsively readable story of power, money, sex-and survival. Ela Lee writes with utter clarity and heartbreaking insight about the cost of survival in cut-throat corporate environments and about the gray space between complicity and compromise. Urgent and necessary, this is a book that will take up space in your heart and mind long after the last page." -CECILIA RABESS, author of Everything's Fine
"Ela Lee has crafted a novel that's compulsive, rousing and raw. Jaded is a dizzying debut about power, race, consent, entitlement, and so much more."-Chloë Ashby, author of Wet Paint