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saidtheraina 's review for:
It's Not Like It's a Secret
by Misa Sugiura
Pro-voiced review:
Moving to a new place forces you to reinvent yourself. For Sana, this means going to a new high school – and suddenly, for the first time in her life, she has peers who share her cultural identity. She quickly meets a new crush, and this means she is faced with revealing to the world that she is attracted to women. Misa Sugiura’s first book is an engrossing coming of age story, full of the realistic intersectionality of life. Her writing is full of evocative analogies and heartbreaking realizations. Sana struggles with feeling forced into a group based on her heritage, but then feels a sense of community and belonging within that group. Some underage drinking and off-the-page sex make this better for a high school audience, though some mature middle schools will enjoy it as well. Highly recommended for collections serving teens.
A little more:
I was really worried this was going to be a slog. It's thick, and I needed to read it during a time of the year in which I have a lot of other demands on my reading attention. Fortunately, I ripped right through it in a matter of a few days.
I loved how Sugiura didn't back away from the complicated territory of navigating relationships with people from another group of friends. No matter what the dividing line is, every group of humans has their own norms, expectations, values. And entering into an established group can be TOUGH (Raina has flashbacks to angsty patches of her dating history). Add to that the struggle of not conforming to the larger expectation-of-norm (i.e. being gay). And dealing with your friends and family and their reactions to that. Oh wow, have I been there. In some ways I'm still there. So yeah, maybe I'm not the most unbiased reviewer of this book. Some of the (sub?)plots I barely paid attention to (i.e. is dad having an affair).
Oh, one other side note - reading over my age recommendation, it makes me sound more conservative about content than I am. The underage drinking is very early in the book, which played a role in that call. Also, middle school means 6-8th grade in my area.
Moving to a new place forces you to reinvent yourself. For Sana, this means going to a new high school – and suddenly, for the first time in her life, she has peers who share her cultural identity. She quickly meets a new crush, and this means she is faced with revealing to the world that she is attracted to women. Misa Sugiura’s first book is an engrossing coming of age story, full of the realistic intersectionality of life. Her writing is full of evocative analogies and heartbreaking realizations. Sana struggles with feeling forced into a group based on her heritage, but then feels a sense of community and belonging within that group. Some underage drinking and off-the-page sex make this better for a high school audience, though some mature middle schools will enjoy it as well. Highly recommended for collections serving teens.
A little more:
I was really worried this was going to be a slog. It's thick, and I needed to read it during a time of the year in which I have a lot of other demands on my reading attention. Fortunately, I ripped right through it in a matter of a few days.
I loved how Sugiura didn't back away from the complicated territory of navigating relationships with people from another group of friends. No matter what the dividing line is, every group of humans has their own norms, expectations, values. And entering into an established group can be TOUGH (Raina has flashbacks to angsty patches of her dating history). Add to that the struggle of not conforming to the larger expectation-of-norm (i.e. being gay). And dealing with your friends and family and their reactions to that. Oh wow, have I been there. In some ways I'm still there. So yeah, maybe I'm not the most unbiased reviewer of this book. Some of the (sub?)plots I barely paid attention to (i.e. is dad having an affair).
Spoiler
...Although I do want to say I appreciated the poly-ish place we left Sana's family. This was not traditional resolution to the affair plot-line.Spoiler
Oh, one other side note - reading over my age recommendation, it makes me sound more conservative about content than I am. The underage drinking is very early in the book, which played a role in that call. Also, middle school means 6-8th grade in my area.