Aria is the 18-year-old protagonist of the story, which is told exclusively from her point of view. The first-person narration provides intimate insight into Aria’s thoughts, emotions, and perception of events, at the cost of not revealing any other character’s point of view. Aria is half Chinese, and though she has a distant relationship to her Chinese culture and identity, she looks noticeably different from her white relatives. She lives with her dad, Matthew, because her parents are divorced and her mother often travels as a professional opera singer. Aria’s relationship with her mother is tense, as she often feels like a lower priority than Alexis’s career. The name Aria, which by definition is a long, accompanied solo sung in an opera, inherently links her to her mother’s work.

Aria arrives at her grandmother’s house at the start of the novel feeling shameful and resentful in the aftermath of a classmate’s posting nude photos of her on the internet. However, as she forges new friendships and spends more time with Joan, Aria becomes fully immersed in discovering new and significant parts of her identity. She earnestly pursues a relationship with a woman for the first time, starts to paint, and treasures getting to know her grandmother.