It’s Not Like It’s a Secret by Misa Sugiura

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Title: It's Not Like It's a Secret
Author: Misa Sugiura
Published by: HarperCollins
Release Date: May 9, 2017
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller
Length: 10 hours and 34 minutes
Genres: Young Adult, Coming of Age, LGBT, Contemporary, Romance
Source: Libby
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2020 Audiobook Challenge, Lenoreo's 2020 Diversity Reading Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ IndieBound ✩ iTunes
My rating:

Blurb:

This charming and bittersweet coming-of-age story featuring two girls of color falling in love is part To All the Boys I've Loved Before and part Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda.

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 her father may be having an affair. And then there’s the one that she can barely even admit 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 some honesty, especially after she meets Jamie Ramirez. Jamie is beautiful and smart and unlike anyone Sana’s ever known. There are just a few problems: Sana's new friends don't trust Jamie's crowd; Jamie's friends clearly don't want her around anyway; and a sweet guy named Caleb seems to have more-than-friendly feelings for her. Meanwhile, her dad’s affair is becoming too obvious to ignore.

Sana always figured that the hardest thing would be to tell people that she wants to date a girl, but as she quickly learns, telling the truth is easy…what comes after it, though, is a whole lot more complicated.

My Review:

4 stars — OMG, this one tested my second hand embarrassment tolerance to the highest degree.  And like, not even that exactly, but just being so annoyed with a main character, and wanting them to do better and be better!  I almost put it in the freezer…it was that bad.  I actually got worried about Sana’s redemption, but I was satisfied in the end.  There were so many things I loved about this book, but sometimes it was just a bit too cringey real teenagery for this 40 year old.  *snort*

First, can I say that Emily Woo Zeller remains one of my all time favourite narrators?  I really could listen to her narrate almost anything.  She has great voices, great emotion, great pacing.  Her Japanese accent sounded authentic (to this white girl’s ear).  Her pronunciation of the Japanese was beautiful (again, to this white girl).  And she even did teenager scarily accurately!  When Sana get’s annoyed with her Mom, it was like listening to an actual teenager.  Classic.  Honestly, the only thing I found odd was Jamie’s Mom’s voice…it sounded a bit close to how she voiced Sana’s parents.  But honestly, what do I know about accents?

This was a *perfect* YA coming of age in my opinion.  It tackled so many difficult topics, primarily race and sexual orientation.  It had plenty of heartwrenching serious moments, but it also had lots of fluttery first crush, first love moments, and cringey teenage mistake moments.  It felt like an authentic teenage experience.  It was fascinating to get a glimpse of life growing up with immigrant parents, and how, even though Sana knew her Mom was wrong in some overt cases, her racism still bled into Sana’s beliefs in some form.  I appreciated that, because that’s the insidiousness of racism — it’s not all outrageous obviously wrong stuff, it’s the subtleties that *really* matter.  I appreciated having a main character who gets it wrong, who doesn’t realize immediately what is wrong, and who isn’t perfect by the end of the book.  Because it’s going to be easier for people to connect with than someone who is perfect and immediately contrite.

Which is ironic, because the mistakes that Sana makes with her relationships weren’t perfect, and it drove me freaking crazy!!  I wanted less realism there, I wanted fictional “she figures out what she did wrong and learns from it quickly”, even though that’s totally unbelievable.  But it was hard to watch her make those mistakes and treat people badly and keep making excuses for her behavior…ugh, seriously, so hard.  And while I wouldn’t have minded a more clear resolution and growth, I thought that the growth and lessons Sana learned were believable and realistic.  She still has work to do.  But who doesn’t?

Outside of all that hard to watch realism, there was the absolutely ADORABLE moments of Sana developing her crush, and the tentative dance she and Jamie go through as they start off as friends and both don’t want to make a misstep.  It just got to my heart.  They were SO CUTE together, I just adored them.  And through her new relationship, it was interesting to see Sana struggle with coming out.  I was a bit bummed that Sana’s friends were less sensitive to how important it is for Sana to decide how to come out — they took that away from her, and I don’t think they ever really knew what they did wrong there.  So that was a bummer.  But there were a lot of interesting and real conversations that happened with her friends and family about that.

I did NOT expect the turn her story took with her Dad.  That surprised the heck out of me, and I’m still digesting it.  Not good or bad, just different.  I keep thinking of them as real people, and hoping she gets a better relationship with him.

So yeah.  Lots of thoughts.  I definitely recommend it to any YA lovers who are looking for a double shot of diversity.  And I actually think it would be great for teenage YA lovers too (not just us odd adult YA lovers).