Mika in Real Life: A Novel

Amazon.com Review\nAn Amazon Best Book of August 2022: Emiko Jean is the best-selling author of witty young adult rom-coms Tokyo Ever After and Tokyo Dreaming, and while her first adult novel, Mika in Real Life, has rom-com vibes, this is a book with real heft. When Mika was a freshman in college she got pregnant and gave her daughter up for adoption. Sixteen years later, Mika’s daughter finds her, and what follows is a story of motherhood, forgiveness, and fresh starts. Mika’s catharsis became my own, as she realizes that her expectation of how a “good” mother should be is the stuff of fairytales. The relationship between mother and child is complicated pretty much from birth, and whether you are a mother, the child, or both, it’s two sides of the same coin where perfection is a fantasy. Jean gives us authentic characters, a lot of laughs, and a chance to see our own relationships—with our mothers, our children, and ourselves—in a new and refreshing light.—Seira Wilson, Amazon Editor\nA GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
In this brilliant new novel 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.
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, 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.