Mika in Real Life is Jean’s adult debut, but she’s also the author of several YA novels, including the bestselling Tokyo Ever After, which pubbed in 2021. But what happens when Penny and her dad, Thomas, find out who Mika really is? And what does Mika have to do for herself in order to truly move forward? With that, Mika’s world is turned upside down, giving her new purpose and passion as she works to create a life worthy of the daughter she had to give up. Then Mika gets an unexpected call: Penny, the daughter she’d given up for adoption 16 years earlier, is on the phone and asks if the two of them can meet. She’s been fired from another job she didn’t really care about, her relationship with her boyfriend has ended, and she’s living with her best friend while trying to relate to her traditional Japanese parents it seems that in the eyes of her mom, Hiromi, she can never do anything right. When the book begins, 35-year-old Japanese American Mika is trying to figure out who she is. That’s really where Mika started-this desire to tell a story about mothers, but try to drill it down into universal experiences.”

“I was terrified of how much I loved these babies, and so how could I deal with that? How could I process it? I used the page. “I think this is a universal experience for most mothers,” says Jean, 40, who channeled her feelings about having her twins, who are now four and a half, into the book. The message on the sweatshirt, she points out, is appropriate because her new book, Mika in Real Life (Morrow, Aug.), is about love-particularly the variety between mothers and daughters. It’s early in the morning in Vancouver, Wash., but Emiko Jean is speaking cheerfully via Zoom and sipping from a mug, wearing a cream-colored sweatshirt with the word love written on it in black.

Emiko jean