It's Not Like It's a Secret - Misa Sugiura

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Sixteen-year-old Sana Kiyohara has too many secrets. Some are small, like how it bothers her when her friends don't invite her to parties. Some are big, like the fact that she's pretty sure her father's having an affair. And then there is the one that she barely even admits to herself, the one about how she might have a crush on her best friend.

When Sana and her family move to California, she begins to wonder if it's finally time for her to be honest with her friends and family, especially after she meets Jamie Ramirez. Jamie is beautiful and smart and unlike anyone Sana's ever known before. The only problems are: Sana is pretty sure Jamie's friends hate her, Jamie's ex isn't totally out of the picture, Sana's new friend Caleb has more-than-friendly feelings for her, and things with her dad feel like they're coming to a head. She always figured that the hardest thing would be to tell people that she wanted to date a girl, but as Sana quickly learns, telling the truth is easy...what comes after it, though, is a whole lot more complicated."

Spoilers included in this review. You have been warned.

The first half of this book:

The second half of this book:

So...I split the difference, averaged out the 4-star start and 2-star ending, and gave it 3 stars overall. It set out with such promise. Sana finds out over the summer that she'll be moving to California before the start of the new school year. Sad face, except that her friends are kind of shitty and openly racist, so she bucks up, makes the best of it, and quickly makes better friends at her new school. Yay! One of those friends is Jamie Ramirez, who she has a meet cute with while purchasing new sheets and immediately develops a crush on. Then you learn that Jamie likes Sana back, and...😍. Sana comes out to (most of) her friends, who are super supportive, and things seem all set to proceed in a blissfully happy manner.

This, of course, is when it goes off the rails. And not off the rails in the typical book fashion, where obviously conflict must take place to further the plot, otherwise why are we even reading the book? But off the rails like the author tried to do WAY too much, which led to a rushed, unsatisfactory ending and to some of the plot points not even being wrapped up. What disappointed me most was that out of what I would consider the three main plot points - Sana's dad cheating, Sana saying and believing racist stuff about Latinx people, and Jamie spending time with her ex, leading to Sana cheating on her as a result - the most compelling storyline was the one that ended up not being addressed. 

Frankly, Sana's dad "cheating" didn't serve the story and should not have been included at all, which of course meant it featured most heavily and was dragged out for far too long. Sana cheating on Jamie with Caleb is handled horribly, and I've got to say, let boys and girls just be friends, for fuck sake! I liked Jamie and Caleb as friends, and I didn't understand pulling Caleb into a manufactured conflict when an actual, great, needs-to-be-addressed conflict was right there in the form of internalized racism. This comes up about halfway through the book, Jamie and her friends confront Sana about it, and then...nothing. It literally disappears until the last chapter of the book. 

Sana listening to her girlfriend and making an effort to unlearn the things she grew up believing would have been way more engaging than watching Sana stalk her dad and treat everyone she cares about like shit. I get that Sana is a teenager, and remembering myself as a teenager, there are definitely things she did that I would have handled just as poorly. That said, even teenagers live and learn, and that was my biggest problem with this book. Throughout the story, Sana goes through repeated cycles of contemplation, epiphany about how to do better, and then proceeding with the same course of action she was on before. Wrapping everything up super neatly in a last chapter that was basically an unnecessary epilogue does not equal development as a character, and without the main character changing and growing throughout the book, what is even the point?

If you, like me, are interested in reading more books with Japanese or Japanese American main characters, below is a list of books I'll be adding to my TBR list. (Also, for anyone interested in nerding out on racism in punctuation and why many folx are advocating for dropping the use of a hyphen when referencing individuals of dual heritage, this is a fantastic article about it!)

1. We Are Not Free by Traci Chee - Historical fiction about the wrongful incarceration of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II.

2. Displacement by Kiku Hughes - A graphic novel about a teenager pulled back in time to witness her grandmother's incarceration in a World War II internment camp.

3. I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn - A present-day realistic fiction about a fashion-obsessed teenager who takes a trip to Japan to visit her estranged grandparents over spring break.

4. Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman - A present-day realistic fiction about the main character's anxiety and mental health struggles in the wake of not getting into the school of their dreams.

5. Ink and Ashes by Valynne E. Maetani - A mystery about a teenager who discovers shortly after her father's death that he was...GASP!...a member of the yakuza.

6. Keep it Together, Keiko Carter by Debbi Michiko Florence - Realistic middlegrade fiction about starting seventh grade and navigating the friend drama that inevitably comes with it.

7. Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters by Margaret Dilloway - A middlegrade fantasy about two boys who find themselves pulled into a mythical adventure they may not be quite prepared for.