Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

Aimes is a beautiful social media influencer with blond hair, gray eyes, and perfect skin. She is in her early twenties and is a point-of-view character in the novel. People often get confused by her name, believing it to be a contraction of “Amy,” leading Aimes to wryly note that clarifying her name is the story of her life. She has a degree in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She often notes that her degree did not equip her to get a well-paying job. At the same time, Aimes feels she has disappointed herself and her parents by choosing a career in social media, rather than becoming a writer or a journalist. To handle this discomfort, Aimes falsely claims to her friends from Berkeley that she works for a newspaper. Keeping up this deception has isolated Aimes from her friends.

Aimes is intelligent and self-aware, such as when she notes that on social media, “You want to convey perfection while at the same time appearing like you haven’t toiled away at achieving it” (59). As this observation shows, Aimes knows that portraying an enviable life on social media is unsustainable in the long run. However, since social media provides her with validation and an income, she cannot drop the façade she has constructed on Instagram and TikTok. Her character arc highlights the theme of The Clash Between Online Personas and Reality. When Xander asks her to participate in a video revealing that their online personas are fake, Aimes refuses because she is afraid of the consequences. Since Xander dies shortly after, Aimes is weighed down by guilt. She finally confesses the truth to Vera, and after she discloses to her that her life on social media—the relationship with Xander, the perfect apartment—is all a lie, she feels unburdened. She finally confesses the truth over social media, showing her character growth. Thus, Aimes is a dynamic character with an evolving arc. As the novel ends, Aimes decides to take a break from social media so she can figure out what she really wants to do with her life.

One of the book’s point-of-view characters, Millie is a 27-year-old Chinese woman. Her real name is Lin Penxi, and she was trafficked from the Yunnan province in China when she was only 12. She lives under the control of a criminal duo whom she calls Mother and Father. Millie is described as pretty and pale. She is forced to limit her food intake by Mother and Father so that she looks skinny and vulnerable, which they believe is attractive to men. Millie also notes that Mother encourages her to use minimal makeup so that she appears young. Since Millie’s narration reveals her secrets very gradually, she is an unreliable narrator in the early chapters. Her sentences are often framed so that they refer to the truth only obliquely, such as when she notes that her mind is in a mess “ever since she came to this place” (21). In the context of Millie being an immigrant, “this place” on face value could refer to the United States itself. However, the phrase has far more sinister connotations for Millie; the place to which she is alluding is the warehouse where she lives under coercion.

Millie often behaves in an abrupt or nervous fashion because of the many secrets she is keeping from Vera and the others. One of these secrets is that she is forced into running scams; the other is that Mother and Father know about Vera and her tea shop. The particular nature of her scams—Millie financially dupes the men that she dates—makes her ashamed. When she meets Oliver, she tells him that she is a stewardess for a private airline to protect her reality. Millie often feels inferior when it comes to appearances. For instance, she immediately feels jealous of Aimes’s looks. However, even though Millie is a flawed character, she is also shown to be courageous and loyal. Vera notes the dichotomy in Millie’s character; “Millie strikes Vera as very weak in many ways, but then there are times when she shows strength of spirit that surprises Vera” (181). Showcasing this strength of spirit, Millie stands up to Mother and Father at the end of the novel, exhorting them to spare Vera. After the couple locks her up, Millie writes a letter to Vera, confessing her truth. Thus, Millie finds and expresses the courage she feared she lacked; her actions show that she is a dynamic character. Millie is also shown to be protective of her “siblings,” the other young people who are trapped by Father and Mother, such as Thomas/Xander and Channary.

Qiang Wen, an older Chinese man, is a point-of-view character in the book. He runs a dumpling shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown and is shown to be reclusive and lonely at the novel’s beginning. After his wife died from cancer, Qiang Wen retreated into his business, feeling isolated even from his daughter and Americanized grandchildren. His isolation illustrates the novel’s theme of the need to empower older individuals. A big part of Qiang Wen’s loneliness relates to the loss of his mother tongue. Qiang Wen finds himself longing to speak to people in Cantonese. When his grandchildren call him “gramps,” he misses the softer Chinese-language names for grandfather. Xander catalyzes the end of Qiang Wen’s isolation, since he brings Qiang Wen to the forefront of contemporary life through social media.

As the novel proceeds, Qiang Wen begins to reengage with life through Vera’s influence. At Vera’s tea shop, he notes that food is beginning to taste like food again, rather than the ashes he has been used to for several years. Deciding to take control of his life, Qiang Wen comes clean with Vera that he went along with Xander’s grandfather-grandson act because it gave him a way out of his lonely existence. As the novel ends, Qiang Wen decides that he will no longer sit life out. The change in Qiang Wen shows he is a three-dimensional character with a dynamic arc.

A point-of-view character, TJ is a social media talent manager and the head of TJ Vasquez Talent Management. He is depicted as a conscientious father and employer, striving to do the right thing by his 13-year-old daughter, Robin, and his employees Elsie, Kit, and Lomax. At the same time, TJ feels overwhelmed by the responsibility of being a single parent to Robin. He tells Vera that his once-close relationship with his daughter has grown fraught ever since she entered her teens. Additionally, TJ’s business is floundering ever since an influencer’s negative post about him went viral. TJ’s exaggerated sense of responsibility makes him appear too serious and pessimistic. Thus, he initially pushes back against Vera’s friendly overtures toward him and Robin.

However, as the plot proceeds, TJ grows closer to Vera, confessing that he feels inadequate around Robin. TJ also learns the value of doing the right thing. Having refused to support Xander’s plan to expose his social media identity as an elaborate construction as he believed it would destroy his business and jeopardize Robin’s future, TJ realizes that parenting is not just about providing—it also means teaching one’s child how to stand up for the truth. Thus, TJ agrees to participate in Vera’s video unveiling the truth about Xander. TJ’s growth as a person and parent make him a dynamic character.

The antagonists of the novel, Mother and Father are a married couple who are part of a human trafficking ring in Oakland and San Francisco. Seen through Millie’s eyes, Mother and Father appear larger-than-life, near-monstrous figures. Millie’s perception of them shows that the couple exercise considerable psychological control over the young people in their warehouse. In her letter to Vera, Millie exposes the mechanisms of the control: When she was a child, Mother and Father broke her will using a system of alternating rewards and punishment, in the form of treats from McDonald’s when she obeyed them and vicious beatings when she did not. Apart from the beatings, Mother and Father also use warnings to keep the warehouse residents in check, threatening them with arrest, the murder of their parents back home, or their own deaths. Millie notes that the couple can also make good on the threats, since her sister Yara vanished after she ran away. Mother and Father handed Millie Yara’s necklace, indicating that they found her and silenced her.

At the novel’s end, it is revealed that Mother and Father were also behind the murder of Xander. Xander had planned to expose them in a social media post, so they had him killed. Xander’s narrative suggests that Mother and Father may have an insider on the police force, which is perhaps how his intentions became known. Mother and Father have no redeeming features and are presented as wholly evil, especially since they target children. They are flat characters and do not repent their actions or learn from their mistakes.