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, 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?
Comment: I can't remember why I've added this book to my TBR list but it is likely I've done it because the heroine would be going through a complicated time but then with patience and perhaps a romance, her life would improve. Plus, it would feature a child the heroine had given up for adoption discovering her and wanting a relationship. I was quite curious to see how the author would do it.
In this story we meet Mika, a Japanese-American who feels her life had gone nowhere. She knows her more traditional parents left Japan for a better life and Mika believed the dream until a terrible event happened while she was in college. Following that, Mika has done the possible to avoid specific responsibilities, especially linked to emotions, and that is why, in part, that she gave up her daughter for adoption at birth. Now, sixteen years later, her life is stale but she at least has her best friend Hana, always there to help her. Then, out of nowhere, her daughter Penny contacts her, especially now some years have passes since her adopted other has died, and this leads Mika to try to pretend her life isn't what it is. However, what will she do when Penny and her father Thomas discover the truth?
I am surprised by how much complexity and subjects the author managed to introduce in this story and still make things develop in a consistent way. Certainly that there are a few elements I'd have preferred to see differently, but all in all this did meet the emotional criteria I tend to enjoy in contemporary stories, whether one labels this as woman's fiction or as a romance.
Mika is a captivating character for several reasons but I was particularly interested in seeing her Japanese culture be part of the plot. Most of her interactions with her parents provide this, for they are quite traditional and the dynamics feel very close to what I've gotten by reading other books with Japanese characters. I also think it was an interesting added layer to Mika's personality how much her complicated relationship with her mother influenced her choices in life. This is something we get to see frequently though the novel, and it does add some drama to the plot too.
Deep down, Mika has grown up as an almost carefree child, despite her roots and the opinions of others around her. Things change when she attends college and something happens. I won't explain, for it would require some spoiler information but it isn't hard to guess, considering she has a child and decides to give her away. The adoption if one of those where the adoptive parents send reports from time to time to the biological mother so it shouldn't be that incredible that her daughter Penny looks for her. This is the event that triggers everything because Mika makes a bad decision: she feels she needs to prove her daughter that her decision was fr a better cause and she wants to show her life is now what she dreamed of, so she lies and pretends to be someone she's not.
Of course that this would not go well, but by this time the story was already half way and I felt the author had done a great job portraying Mika and why she acts/reacts the way she does. How not to feel commiserated over some things, and while I have not gone through anything like Mika does, I could relate to some feelings of inadequacy and low self esteem at times. This means I was quite hopeful that Mika would turn her life round in the second half of the book and that is what, indeed, happens. Perhaps not in the overly sweet and unlikely perfect way but in a way I could accept and even appreciate.
As Mika progresses in her self examination, she starts dealing with her traumas in a more considerable way. Perhaps she should seek professional help or therapy for a realistic way, but I can see how the author went into this tactic of making Mika deal with things in a way that still allowed her to reflect on what happened and try to improve. I did like this new Mika, after the hard lessons the lie taught her. I would not say her behavior was then as correct as hindsight allows, but I was happy enough with what she does and how she tries to be someone Penny can be proud of for real. Yes, some situations then get a bit too good but I didn't mind that, since the emotional aspects were strongly presented, for me.
This was a well achieved story because the characters are realistically drawn. Some things about their lives or details about their decisions make sense in the context we see them in and that makes the evolution of their days go in a way I wanted to see how important it would be or what it would cause. I would have liked a stronger romance since it's an element included here, but I can't say the end was that unfair, considering where the characters need to go, emotionally. It was more a HFN but with a hopeful note.
I'm glad this one worked well for you; it sounds more women's fiction than romance to me, so I'm not sure it's quite my thing, but it goes on the list of "maybe some day".
ReplyDeleteHi!
DeleteYes, the romance is certainly secondary to other elements.
It was a very... grown up type of story you know... characters whose behavior makes sense in that context.