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A review by lucyp21
This Time Will Be Different by Misa Sugiura
4.0
I got this book in a book box and was instantly in love with the cover and the yellow pages. When reviews started to come in, I heard many disappointed reviews about how they were expecting something more, so I was a little wary about starting it. It was both better than I thought it would be and a disappointment at the same time.
This book is about CJ, a teenager who works in her aunt's flower shop and is the only daughter of a single mum. Compared to her mum, CJ feels like a complete failure and not good at anything apart from when she works at the flower shop. So when she and her aunt find out her mum is planning to sell it to the people who had all but stolen it decades before, they are immediately up in arms. And then there's her best friend who is getting together with her childhood bully and the guy she has fantasised about is interested in her. It's all going on.
This book took me a while to get through but after I finished it and looked back at it, I enjoyed the complete book a lot more than I thought I would. CJ and all the characters felt realistic to me. Her mum and aunt weren't perfect, you could see them being more experienced and mature than CJ but they also made mistakes. The teenagers felt like actual teenagers - CJ made mistakes which you could see were the wrong things but her mindset and her character meant that these decisions made sense at the time. It just seemed very true to life, more so than many other YA books, but it was a very slow-paced book for what it was. I liked how the book talked about the internment camps and how they still have an effect on life today. There was an element of protest/addressing white privilege which was woven in nicely to the story.
I really liked Emily's subplot where she starts liking someone who hurt her in the past and how they had to deal with their issues together. It was one of my favourite subplots and I liked how involved CJ was in it.
I would probably recommend this book because of the characters and the plot but the writing style didn't mesh with me too well and so I found it quite slow, even when I was interested in what was going on.
4 stars!
This book is about CJ, a teenager who works in her aunt's flower shop and is the only daughter of a single mum. Compared to her mum, CJ feels like a complete failure and not good at anything apart from when she works at the flower shop. So when she and her aunt find out her mum is planning to sell it to the people who had all but stolen it decades before, they are immediately up in arms. And then there's her best friend who is getting together with her childhood bully and the guy she has fantasised about is interested in her. It's all going on.
This book took me a while to get through but after I finished it and looked back at it, I enjoyed the complete book a lot more than I thought I would. CJ and all the characters felt realistic to me. Her mum and aunt weren't perfect, you could see them being more experienced and mature than CJ but they also made mistakes. The teenagers felt like actual teenagers - CJ made mistakes which you could see were the wrong things but her mindset and her character meant that these decisions made sense at the time. It just seemed very true to life, more so than many other YA books, but it was a very slow-paced book for what it was. I liked how the book talked about the internment camps and how they still have an effect on life today. There was an element of protest/addressing white privilege which was woven in nicely to the story.
I really liked Emily's subplot where she starts liking someone who hurt her in the past and how they had to deal with their issues together. It was one of my favourite subplots and I liked how involved CJ was in it.
I would probably recommend this book because of the characters and the plot but the writing style didn't mesh with me too well and so I found it quite slow, even when I was interested in what was going on.
4 stars!