When Mika Suzuki began college, she never imagined that she’d end her freshman year pregnant, much less that the distressing circumstances surrounding her pregnancy would ultimately compel her to waive her rights to the child she gave birth to. Defying her parents’ expectations that she pursue a safe and practical major like science, law, or business, young Mika gambled on her creative passions and initially chose to major in art. Despite her mother’s resounding prediction that she’d certainly fail, Mika envisioned a fruitful career as an artist and a life full of love and travel. She didn’t envision that at 35, she’d feel so aimless and all of those dreams would still be unattainable, seemingly proving her mother right.

On the heels of being fired from yet another dead-end job, Mika receives an unexpected reminder of her youth when Penelope “Penny” Calvin calls her. Now 16 and grieving the loss of her adoptive mother Caroline, Penny has a lot of questions about her origins and hopes that Mika, her birth mother, will help provide some context for her. Mika shifts from gobsmacked to ecstatic, then extremely panicked, when the budding connection she forges with Penny over text messages and FaceTimes turns into Penny’s spontaneous plan to fly out from Ohio to Portland to visit her over her school break. Eager to give Penny a biological backstory that she can be proud of and afraid of disappointing her as she’d so often disappointed her own mother, Mika embellishes the details of her life to make it appear much nicer and more stable than it actually is. From afar, Mika’s lies could remain well-meaning and undetectable; up close, everything would crumble fast. To put her in an even greater bind, Thomas Calvin, Penny’s widower adoptive father, insists on accompanying Penny on her visit.

Although Mika’s close friends help her scramble together a presentable picture of adulthood by the time Penny and Thomas arrive, Mika’s far from in the clear as the fiercely protective Thomas regards Mika with obvious suspicion. Just as Mika gains Penny’s trust and her and Thomas’s mutual tolerance for Penny’s sake transforms into something platonic with the potential of something more, Mika’s fictional life explodes in a spectacularly mortifying and public fashion. To have a life not steeped in fiction and continue to build the bonds she’d begun to cultivate, Mika must confront the painful parts of her past and rebuild herself. 

Mika in Real Life is a funny and moving book about a second-generation daughter of immigrants reclaiming her voice and sense of purpose in life as she learns from and works through her newfound relationship with the daughter she shares with the couple that raised her. Emiko Jean depicts the richly intricate ties between characters and the different types of love that shape them—maternal, filial, paternal, platonic, found family, and romantic—-with care and empathy. Themes of grief, trauma, multicultural families, transracial adoption, parenthood, childhood, friendship, and self-actualization are all thoughtfully interwoven in a bittersweet novel that ranges between upmarket women’s fiction and literary fiction with romantic elements.