de Emiko Jean
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA and READ WITH MARIE CLAIRE BOOK CLUB PICK!
Named a best book by Glamour, Marie Claire, TIME, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and more!
From New York Times bestselling Emiko Jean, a whip-smart, laugh-out-loud funny, and utterly heartwarming novel about motherhood, daughterhood, and love—how we find it, keep it, and how it always returns.
One phone call changes everything.
At thirty-five, Mika Suzuki's life is a mess. Her last relationship ended in flames. Her roommate-slash-best friend might be a hoarder. She's a perpetual disappointment to her traditional Japanese parents. And, most recently, she's been fired from her latest dead-end job.
Mika is at her lowest point when she receives a phone call from Penny—the daughter she placed for adoption sixteen years ago. Penny is determined to forge a relationship with her birth mother, and in turn, Mika longs to be someone Penny is proud of. Faced with her own inadequacies, Mika embellishes a fact about her life. What starts as a tiny white lie slowly snowballs into a fully-fledged fake life, one where Mika is mature, put-together, and successful in love and her career.
The details of Mika's life might be an illusion, but everything she shares with curious, headstrong Penny is real: her hopes, dreams, flaws, and Japanese heritage. The harder-won heart belongs to Thomas Calvin, Penny's adoptive widower father. What starts as a rocky, contentious relationship slowly blossoms into a friendship and, over time, something more. But can Mika really have it all—love, her daughter, the life she's always wanted? Or will Mika's deceptions ultimately catch up to her? In the end, Mika must face the truth—about herself, her family, and her past—and answer the question, just who is Mika in real life?
Perfect for fans of Rebecca Serle and Jojo Moyes, Mika in Real Life is at once a heart-wrenching and uplifting novel that explores the weight of silence, the secrets we keep, and what it means to be a mother.
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA and READ WITH MARIE CLAIRE BOOK CLUB PICK!
Named a best book by Glamour, Marie Claire, TIME, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and more!
From New York Times bestselling Emiko Jean, a whip-smart, laugh-out-loud funny, and utterly heartwarming novel about motherhood, daughterhood, and love—how we find it, keep it, and how it always returns.
One phone call changes everything.
At thirty-five, Mika Suzuki's life is a mess. Her last relationship ended in flames. Her roommate-slash-best friend might be a hoarder. She's a perpetual disappointment to her traditional Japanese parents. And, most recently, she's been fired from her latest dead-end job.
Mika is at her lowest point when she receives a phone call from Penny—the daughter she placed for adoption sixteen years ago. Penny is determined to forge a relationship with her birth mother, and in turn, Mika longs to be someone Penny is proud of. Faced with her own inadequacies, Mika embellishes a fact about her life. What starts as a tiny white lie slowly snowballs into a fully-fledged fake life, one where Mika is mature, put-together, and successful in love and her career.
The details of Mika's life might be an illusion, but everything she shares with curious, headstrong Penny is real: her hopes, dreams, flaws, and Japanese heritage. The harder-won heart belongs to Thomas Calvin, Penny's adoptive widower father. What starts as a rocky, contentious relationship slowly blossoms into a friendship and, over time, something more. But can Mika really have it all—love, her daughter, the life she's always wanted? Or will Mika's deceptions ultimately catch up to her? In the end, Mika must face the truth—about herself, her family, and her past—and answer the question, just who is Mika in real life?
Perfect for fans of Rebecca Serle and Jojo Moyes, Mika in Real Life is at once a heart-wrenching and uplifting novel that explores the weight of silence, the secrets we keep, and what it means to be a mother.
Critiques-
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June 27, 2022
In Jean’s breezy adult debut (after the Tokyo Ever After YA fantasy series), a woman encounters the daughter she gave up for adoption. Mika Suzuki is recovering from a failed relationship and has just been laid off from her latest dead-end job in Portland, Ore., when she receives a call from Penny Calvin, whom she gave birth to 16 years earlier. Penny, who was raised in Ohio by white adoptive parents, and whose mother has died, wants to meet Mika. Mika, too, wants to meet but chooses to invent a more enviable version of herself, which means staging an elaborate and rickety deception involving a hunky boyfriend and ownership of an art gallery. When the ruse inevitably fails, in part because of the interference of Mika’s difficult Japanese mother, Mika is left to try to forge new, more realistic bonds with Penny—and with Penny’s attractive adoptive attorney father Thomas. Jean ties up the loose ends a bit neatly after a prolonged and increasingly steamy flirtation between Mika and Thomas, but there’s plenty to chew on about interracial adoption and the varieties of mother-daughter experience and conflict. Aside from the familiar rom-com subplot, this gets the job done nicely. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. -
June 10, 2024
Sixteen years ago, Mika gave her newborn daughter up for adoption to a hand-picked couple. Now a thirtysomething struggling to make a living, she loses her job and receives a call from her daughter, Penny, on the same day. She soon meets Penny and her father, Thomas. In an effort to impress, she sets up a more idealized version of her life, until the truth comes out. She has to reckon with her past and navigate a future she only imagined. Jean's (Tokyo Ever After) adult debut explores the intricacies of family, identity, and interracial adoption. Narrated by Sara Siu, Mika is brought to life as a young adult who is adrift because of circumstances beyond her control. Listeners will relate to the struggles of a millennial whose life is not exactly what it should have been. VERDICT Although the romantic aspects of this book are somewhat predictable, listeners will appreciate Jean's sensitive treatment of culture, race, and identity, both as an immigrant and an adoptee. A fluffy, but heartfelt novel that will have crossover appeal and should please fans of Kiley Reid's Such a Fun Age or Chelsey Johnson's Stray City.--Elyssa Everling
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
