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A review by thepetitepunk
It's Not Like It's a Secret by Misa Sugiura
4.0
3.5 stars? 4? I’m not sure.
So this DEFINITELY will not be for everyone. I will just put this warning out there right now: this book deals with prominent themes of cheating and racism, with a generous dash of homophobia and general stereotyping. If you don’t like books that rely on cheating and ignorant characters (there’s character growth! fear not! but their racist and homophobic comments are still noticeably abundant), this won’t be for you. Also...be prepared for some unlikeable, messy characters.
Now that that’s over with, I surprisingly enjoyed this much more than I was expecting. Based on the reviews I read before reading the book myself, I assumed that I wasn’t going to like quite a few elements of this book, just based on the fact that I haven’t liked those same elements in other books. But somehow it worked for me? I’m confused.
Our main character Sana is a hot mess. She whines all the time. She makes terrible decisions. She makes terrible decisions while whining about said terrible decisions because she knows she’s making terrible decisions that will have consequences that she will whine about later. Seriously. Sana is ALL over the place.
I think it’s safe to say that her character will annoy most people at the very least, but most likely anger readers due to her unfathomably atrocious decision-making skills. Now, I don’t know what this says about me, but I think Sana and her epic tale of just repeatedly being horrible made me like the book. It was (shhhhh don’t judge me) oddly relatable...? See, whenever I relate to a character and then read reviews that the character was so god-awful and ruined the book, I get a little self-conscious because that’s probably what people are saying about me in real life. Lol. But yeah. Sana struggles to speak up, deals with constant cognitive dissonance, wants to be a goody-two-shoes while also wanting to do “rebellious” things, gets angry, gets jealous, gets vengeful, gets confused, gets hurt, gets whiny, gets messy, etc. etc. etc.
I just related to this, okay? People aren’t perfect. Aaaand some people deal with that in better ways than other. (And that wouldn’t not be Sana. Or me.)
So this DEFINITELY will not be for everyone. I will just put this warning out there right now: this book deals with prominent themes of cheating and racism, with a generous dash of homophobia and general stereotyping. If you don’t like books that rely on cheating and ignorant characters (there’s character growth! fear not! but their racist and homophobic comments are still noticeably abundant), this won’t be for you. Also...be prepared for some unlikeable, messy characters.
Now that that’s over with, I surprisingly enjoyed this much more than I was expecting. Based on the reviews I read before reading the book myself, I assumed that I wasn’t going to like quite a few elements of this book, just based on the fact that I haven’t liked those same elements in other books. But somehow it worked for me? I’m confused.
Our main character Sana is a hot mess. She whines all the time. She makes terrible decisions. She makes terrible decisions while whining about said terrible decisions because she knows she’s making terrible decisions that will have consequences that she will whine about later. Seriously. Sana is ALL over the place.
I think it’s safe to say that her character will annoy most people at the very least, but most likely anger readers due to her unfathomably atrocious decision-making skills. Now, I don’t know what this says about me, but I think Sana and her epic tale of just repeatedly being horrible made me like the book. It was (shhhhh don’t judge me) oddly relatable...? See, whenever I relate to a character and then read reviews that the character was so god-awful and ruined the book, I get a little self-conscious because that’s probably what people are saying about me in real life. Lol. But yeah. Sana struggles to speak up, deals with constant cognitive dissonance, wants to be a goody-two-shoes while also wanting to do “rebellious” things, gets angry, gets jealous, gets vengeful, gets confused, gets hurt, gets whiny, gets messy, etc. etc. etc.
I just related to this, okay? People aren’t perfect. Aaaand some people deal with that in better ways than other. (And that wouldn’t not be Sana. Or me.)