In the opening pages of Michelle See-Tho’s début novel, Jade and Emerald, an unnamed narrator is avoiding someone’s gaze. That someone is ‘pristine, poised like a goddess’ to the narrator’s vision of herself: haircut ‘like an eight-year-old boy’s’, smudged make-up, dress the wrong colour. There is a secret between these two young women, blown open by the prologue’s end.

Cut to 1990s Melbourne, where Lei Ling Wen is struggling to fit in. At twelve, she is still treated as a child by her single mother, Jing Fei, and bullied at school by her wealthy classmate Angela Nu, the only other Asian girl in her grade. Lei Ling aches to be seen as her own person, and when she befriends Angela’s rich, worldly aunt Gigi at a birthday party, she senses the opportunity for escape.