Sugiura thoughtfully explores intersecting issues of race, immigrant-family relationships, queer romance, and, less explicitly, class dynamics without implying the significance of one over the others. Well-paced, brimming with drama, and utterly vital.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A queer coming-of-age story that also tackles big topics like adultery, racism, and the cultural conflicts of immigrant families.” — Brightly

“An essential and delightful choice that realistically celebrates a teen’s discovery of trust in herself and in others.” — School Library Journal

A queer coming-of-age story that also tackles big topics like adultery, racism, and the cultural conflicts of immigrant families.

It’s a queer coming-of-age story that also tackles big topics like adultery, racism, and the cultural conflicts of immigrant families.

06/01/2017
Gr 9 Up—When high school junior Sana, who is Japanese American, moves from her lifelong home in Wisconsin to California, she can socialize for the first time with other Asian American teens. She arrives at her new school with a number of secrets, including her suspicion that her father has been cheating on her mother for years. Sana is also sure that she herself is a lesbian. And now she has a crush on Jamie, a whip-smart Latina classmate, and Sana has another secret that she's sure she must conceal from her new crowd of friends. In addition, Sana also copes with her emotionally cold mother and faces racial profiling by a local cop when she's with a group of Mexican American friends. Sugiura handles the story adroitly; readers will feel Sana's onslaught of emotions, understand her missteps as she chooses dishonesty over opening herself to rebuke in several situations, and cheer for her strengthening capacity to own her identity, trust her friends, and see her parents' relationship with empathy. Major and minor supporting characters of every age and both genders are just as credibly realized as Sana as her narration unfolds. VERDICT An essential and delightful choice that realistically celebrates a teen's discovery of trust in herself and in others.—Francisca Goldsmith, Library Ronin, Worcester, MA

Narrator Emily Woo Zeller shines as 16-year-old Sana, a Japanese-American girl who is grappling with her sense of self. Sana and her family have just moved from Wisconsin to a more diverse community in California. As Sana finds herself connecting with a group of Asian-American girls, she is also falling hard for a Mexican-American girl on the cross-country team. Zeller excels at embodying the teen angst and immigrant family drama at the center of Sana’s life. Author Misa Sugiura masterfully weaves in struggles of identity, race, class, and young love without emphasizing any one issue over another. Shifting between the accents of Sana’s friends and even Japanese phrases from her mom with ease, Zeller showcases each character through Sana’s eyes in this coming-of-age novel. E.A.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

★ 2017-04-01
Sugiura debuts with an angst-y coming-of-age narrative set at the intersections of identity, family, and first love.Sixteen-year-old Japanese-American Sana Kiyohara doesn't like to rock the boat, biting her tongue over such secrets as her resentment of her conservative and casually racist mother, her suspicion that her father's in a yearslong affair, and an unrequited crush on her white childhood friend Trish. Things change, however, when Sana's father moves the family from predominantly white Wisconsin to much-more-diverse California. Sana finds a world of camaraderie as she becomes friends with Vietnamese-American Elaine and Hanh and Chinese-American Reggie and bonds with (and eventually dates) Mexican-American and fellow poetry nerd Jamie. But finding support and unburdening some secrets only leave room for those left unspoken to grow, and soon Sana's suspicions about her father and the flawed logic of her mother's worldview spill over into her other relationships until she is confronted with just how much she does not know. The graceful complexity of this first-person narrative is an accomplishment in itself. Sana is a fully realized protagonist with faults and unacknowledged privilege alongside her nuanced experience of identity and "model minority" racism. Sugiura thoughtfully explores intersecting issues of race, immigrant-family relationships, queer romance, and, less explicitly, class dynamics without implying the significance of one over the others. Well-paced, brimming with drama, and utterly vital. (Fiction. 14-18)