When Penny tells Mika that she wants to fly to Oregon (Penny and her adoptive father Thomas live in Ohio) to meet her, Mika panics — but luckily, her devoted friends come to the rescue and help her turn the fake life she created into a reality. I hoped things would work out, but I had doubts that this was the best way to build an authentic relationship. I really enjoyed the letters about Penny and how it gave the book almost a diary/memoir kind of feel. There’s nothing that I love more than a good redemption story and Mika might just be making my dreams come true! In this episode, we hear Jean in conversation with Here and Now's Celeste Headlee about the book, in which a teen girl – Penny – tries to connect with her birth mother Mika.

This is only magnified when she is reunited with her daughter Penny, who she had at 19 and gave up for adoption.I think this story can also be appreciated by parents and what it means to be one, especially when you're child is on the cusp of adulthood. It seems to sensitively depict the relationship between Mika and Penny but there seems to be humour and lightness too. Having themes on finding identity, of dreams, family dynamics, motherhood and forgiveness—the blurb was so engrossing and I kind of falling in love with the characters later on. Amidst the backdrop of cherry blossoms, castles, and royal life, she has real-world struggles trying to fit in to two cultures.

Every OTHER supporting character, however, from work colleagues to ex-boyfriend alike, not helped to support Mika, but to add depth and breadth to the narrative. Jean didn't hold back and captured the raw emotions between characters when they messed up or were changing and growing. Mika is also forced to reevaluate her life and her choices, trying to learn and grow and realize that what happened in her past does not have to completely define her future. But even he seems to warm to Mika as her fake life takes center stage and all the impressive, ambitious goals she had for herself before she got pregnant finally start to seem real. high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.To me, the romance between Mika and Penny’s adoptive father was forced, not to mention a bit creepy and off-putting.

That said…I don’t have those experiences myself, so I’d listen to other reviewers over people who have had those experiences over me. And so, all of that kind of became hands that pushed her down into being pretty inactive in her own life. Mika has a troubled relationship with her Japanese immigrant parents and hasn't recovered from a trauma she experienced in college. Not close to this yet, but it gave me a lot to think about) I think Jean captured the nuances and complexities of all these situations so well without overwhelming the reader, and this is a book that I will be thinking about for a long time.

As she grows up, Penny desperately wants to meet her birth mother, and when she finds her, Mika concocts a much more successful version of her life. Exploring motherhood, interracial adoption, identity and past wounds, it had more depth to it than I originally anticipated. Unfortunately, Mika wants this to work so badly, she begins lying about parts of her life she wishes were better: her job, her living arrangements, her boyfriend and well.

This amount includes seller specified domestic postage charges as well as applicable international postage, dispatch, and other fees. Although Mika is the protagonist, and she clearly harbors a lot of pain about giving Penny up for adoption, Jean is careful to chronicle both her journey and that of Penny’s adoptive parents, showing the highs and lows, joys and pains of each side, never favoring one over the other or suggesting that one side is better than the other.Mika in Real Life follows Mika, a 35-year-old Japanese-American woman who gave up her daughter for adoption when she was only 19. And that made me reflect on the times when I hurted my mom too, we rarely say sorry and somehow just immediately talk to each other and lowkey slowly back on a good term. I rooted for her, I stood beside her, she spoke through me, and I love her, but she just didn't dazzling in my eyes though.