Mika in Real Life – Book Review

Title:- Mika in Real Life

Author:- Emiko Jean

Date published:- August 2nd 2022

No. of pages:- 382 pages

Genre:- Fiction/Romance

Rating:-

Plot:- 3/5

Writing:- 4/5

Overall rating:- 3.5/5

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, 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 Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age, Gayle Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and Rebecca Serle’s In Five Years, 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.

In this brilliant new novel by from Emiko Jean, the author of the New York Times bestselling young adult novel Tokyo Ever After, comes 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.

I enjoyed reading Emiko Jeans’ Tokyo dreaming and so I was excited to read Mika in Real Life.

This was in my opinion an OK book.

Mika is fired from her job and is living at the wits end. Many years ago, she gave her new born baby up for adoption and then all of a sudden, after all these years, her daughter calls her to bond with her. Mika meets Penny and wanted to be a perfect mother for her. This story basically talks about the bonds between the mother and the daughter as this also outlines Mika’s own relationship with her mother.

I did enjoy reading this book. The story is mainly told in Mika’s POV and I like the fact that Japanese and American cultures are fused together. This is basically talks about the real complex relationships which the author has well written about that. I do like how Mika tries to connect with Penny, her own daughter, her own strained relationship with her parents particularly with her mother and of course, the budding romance with Penny’s adopted father Thomas. I also like how realistic the whole book was without faking it, Mika’s struggle with life in general, her dealing with a trauma that she faced during college, and I have to say, the author has certainly well written the whole story. It also briefly touches about the cultural identification in general as well.

Overall, this is a great book that talks about complex relationship and is a heartwarming tale between a mother and daughter–worth 3.5 stars.!