Mika in Real Life: A Novel

Product Information

I loved the Japanese culture in this book. And the POV of Mika was an interesting one that we don’t see a lot of in books. I was hoping for some emotional damage from this book, and that did not happen, but it was a great work of fiction about life, love, loss and motherhood. Wow. This book was wonderful. A bit hard to read at times as an adoptee it often brought me to tears . It was an emotional read thinking of my own adoption story and how my own birth mother might have felt. I really connected with Penny and Mika and loved how heartfelt and raw this story was. The story explored many complex feelings between being adopted and giving up a child for adoption. It also explored a bit of romance, strong female friendships and mother daughter relationships. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a total joy of a read' HOLLY MILLER, author of The Sight of You

It's really refreshing to read a book featuring a character like Mika. She doesn't have her life all together, in fact it is not together at all. Throughout the course of the book she learns how to accept that all of her expectations might not be met, especially when it comes to her relationship with her mother. Mika has to come to the acceptance that people are who they are, they can't always be who you want or need them to be.

Emiko Jean

Wow, I did not expect the depth of feeling I found in this book. An amazing and insightful look into adoption, trauma, culture, friendship and the mother-daughter relationship. I LOVED this story. Entertaining, funny and uplifting. Exploring identity, motherhood and second chances, it's one of the most life-affirming books to come out of 2022 Culturefly I liked and appreciated this first adult novel from Emiko Jean. I'll be interested to see which direction she takes with writing in the future because I've enjoyed her YA offerings as well. the drive for perfection persisted within its walls. It was in the dusty kimono Mika refused to wear after she quit odori. In the empty frames where Mika’s Ivy League degree and wedding photos should have gone.” Perfect for fans of Kiley Reid’s SUCH A FUN AGE, Gail 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.

We meet Mika at 35 when she’s just been fired from her latest job. She’s doing a little retail therapy when she gets a call out of the blue. A call from the daughter she gave up for adoption 16 years ago. They start to build a relationship over the phone and then Penny decides she wants to visit Mika in Portland.In addition to parent / child relationships and love in its different manifestations, the story also explores topics such as adoption, race and identity, interracial relationships, cultural expectations vs societal conventions, etc. Even with the heavy topics however, the overall tone of the book was lighthearted and hopeful, with humor playing a significant role in the narrative. In fact, that’s one of the things that stood out the most for me — how Jean was able to strike such a perfect balance throughout the story between the serious and humorous elements without verging into melodramatic (not an easy feat with these types of stories). I also loved the way the characters were rendered, especially Mika herself, who came across so realistically for me, with her insecurities and flaws and the various struggles in life that she has to deal with. Mika is a bit unmoored. The daughter of strict, traditional Japanese parents, she has never really lived up to anyone’s expectations, least of all her own. She has been single for a year, her last relationship ending in a fiery dispute with no solid resolution. She has a ride-or-die best friend, Hana, who she lives with, but their home is not tidy or cozy thanks to Hana’s late-night QVC binges. And she just got fired…again. Mika is drowning her sorrows in the brightly lit aisles of Target when her cell phone rings and changes everything. The voice on the other end is new to her but familiar to her heart: Penny, the daughter she gave up for adoption 16 years ago when she was only a freshman in college. This book surprised me in a good way and I’m really glad I read it. Of course I definitely recommend this one, but with the caveat that each person’s experience reading it will be different. On that note, I also wanted to share this interview that Emiko Jean did, where she talks about her inspiration for this book — it’s a very insightful read: Emiko Jean has a way of writing characters 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.