#WWWWednesday – 30 Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani & Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean #BookReview

We made it to the middle point of the week, bookish peeps! I hope your week has been going well! 

This week is the start of my final year in my graduate program, and so far, it’s been a wonderful week full of new beginnings and blessings for me. 

One of those blessings involves being able to finish a few books to share on this WWW Wednesday!

WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words and asks readers to answer the following questions:

1. What did you read last?
2. What are you currently reading?
3. What will you read next?

What did you read last?

Thank you to Penguin Random House Audio for the Advance Listening Copy (ALC) of 30 Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani and LibroFM for my ALC of Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean.

My first reads were Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean and 30 Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani. Each of these books focused on having the characters develop self-love and self-awareness by being radically honest with themselves and others. 

For Emiko Jean’s character, Mika, a thirty-five year old, first-generation Japanese wannabe artist, her journey to self-awareness and radical self-love has many pitstops. These pitstops include finding her long-lost daughter, Penny, and masquerading as an established artist to impress said daughter. Throughout Jean’s novel, Mika quickly learns that every lie costs. To dismantle her castle of lies, Mika will have to confront her traumatic past and overcome generational curses.

If you are a reader who enjoys character exploration and aren’t afraid of sitting inside uncomfortable situations with a character, Mika in Real Life will be a novel you enjoy. The writing in this book is crisp and the characters are realistic when it comes to tackling issues, such as adoption and sexual trauma. 

There are moments when the book feels as if Jean is stretching reality to its limits with how a character may react to a situation (cough cough…Mika’s plan to build a life so swiftly once she reconnects with Penny…cough cough). But, if the reader suspends reality, things like this silly plan can be overcome. For more empathic and sensitive readers, I would suggest being aware that Jean’s book tackles issues, such as sexual trauma, adoption, the death of a parent, and depression. 

Check out my post about what it’s like to read as an empath.

If you’re looking for similar themes, but delivered in a lighter vein, I would suggest reading 30 Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani. I laughed out loud and snorted throughout reading this book.

While Jean and Sanghani both are writing about thirty-something women whose lives have fallen apart, Sanghani leans into the mess and plays up her character’s, Nina Mistry’s mishaps to sell readers on the absurdity of the self-help industrial complex. 

Nina Mistry is a mess and she knows it! When she’s “gifted” a self-help book called, How to Fix Your Shitty Life by Loving Yourself by the police officer who’s guarding her in jail after her arrest at a protest the night before her thirtieth birthday, she sees it as fate. Nina quickly becomes obsessed with changing her life and those around her for the better. Her schemes involve discovering a newfound love of yoga and embracing her Indian heritage by calling out all that’s wrong with the racist world she lives in. 

Simple, right? Yes and no.

Even though Sanghani’s character is earnest and open to whatever the world may throw her way, Nina is also heavy-handed in executing her radical self-love journey for maximum impact. This means readers see her trying to “eat, pray, love” her way to self-awareness with hilarious results. This book is tailor-made for lovers of books (and movies), like Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding.

I enjoyed this book for many of the same reasons that I adored Jean’s novel. But, the one thing I did find a little off-putting was how severe mental health issues, such as depression and talk of suicide, were handled. While Jean frames her story as a dramedy with a heavy emphasis on the drama, Sanghani’s choice to lean into the comedic part of her narrative makes it hard to pivot to talk about these serious topics and give them the necessary space. This causes readers to be thrown from laughing at Nina’s antics into careening into a scene where Nina is dealing with her father’s suicide and the depression of her brother. Because of these quick turns, I would suggest readers who are empathic or not ready to deal with these topics be aware before reading.

What are you currently reading?/ What will you read next?

Since it’s the start of the semester, I have nothing on my TBR just yet.

If you all have any suggestions, I would love to hear them in the comments below.

I hope you all have a wonderful week until we meet again!