I Love You So Mochi By Sarah Kuhn Book Review

“I’ve found that artistic voice you’re always talking about, Mom. I have that ‘point of view’ you’ve asked me about. I know what my passion is, what lights me up inside. It’s this.” I gesture to my dress. . .”It is important, Mom. It’s as important to me as fine art painting you always wanted me to do. It’s important because it’s important to me.”

(pg. 298)

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Author: Sarah Kuhn

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance

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From Little Tokyo, With Love

Synopsis

Kimi Nakamura loves a good fashion statement.

She’s obsessed with transforming everyday ephemera into Kimi Originals: bold outfits that make her and her friends feel like the Ultimate versions of themselves. But her mother disapproves, and when they get into an explosive fight, Kimi’s entire future seems on the verge of falling apart. So when a surprise letter comes in the mail from Kimi’s estranged grandparents, inviting her to Kyoto for spring break, she seizes the opportunity to get away from the disaster of her life.

When she arrives in Japan, she’s met with a culture both familiar and completely foreign to her. She loses herself in the city’s outdoor markets, art installations, and cherry blossom festival – and meets Akira, a cute aspiring med student who moonlights as a costumed mochi mascot. And what begins as a trip to escape her problems quickly becomes a way for Kimi to learn more about the mother she left behind, and to figure out where her own heart lies.

In I Love You So Mochi, author Sarah Kuhn has penned a delightfully sweet and irrepressibly funny novel that will make you squee at the cute, cringe at the awkward, and show that sometimes you have to lose yourself in something you love to find your Ultimate self.

Review

Spoilers Contained Below

To the lost at soul,

This is a story that really just touches the young at heart. If you love everything fashion, finding yourself, family drama, and more, this is the book to be reading.

If there’s one thing I love besides food, air, water, family, obviously books, it’s fashion. I love the way you can create an outfit or wear something that represents who you are. To Kimi Nakamura, she adores fashion. In fact she creates her very own Kimi Originals made out of candy wrappers, tulle fabric, and even old pages of books. She thinks of her fashion making as more of a passing hobby rather than something that can become a career. Her mother is a Japanese artist who moved away from her parents when she was a teen. Kimi’s mom (who doesn’t have a name), has two grandparents back in Japan and was raised as an only child on a farm. Her parents wanted her to inherit the farm one day to take care of it and they also had dreams of her marrying a full Japanese man. Being that I am Asian, I can kind of understand the culture in why the parents would want that life for their daughter. It’s kind of a thing with Asian parents that you marry someone EXACTLY like you—-same culture, same age, same race—but with a better status. But Kimi’s mom fell in love with an Japanese-American, so because he wasn’t fully Japanese, her parents highly disapproved of the marriage. But you know what? I give Kimi’s mom all the credit for following her heart and marrying who she loved anyway. It kind of sucked that her parents didn’t go to her wedding because they disapproved that much, but it was their loss because they had a beautiful granddaughter and they created a rift in the family.

So married to a Japanese-American, Kimi’s mom and dad moved to America where the dad owns a restaurant making Japanese-American food and the mom is an artist. Growing up, Kimi was ingrained to love art. She was given the typical watercolor paint set with the plastic paintbrush and the sticky palette colors to paint alongside her mom. Kimi enjoyed art and thought it fun, but as she got older, she found that love of art fading away. She dropped out of this art program/academy in her school because she wasn’t inspired by that type of art anymore and she hid this from her mom. One day her mom goes to Kimi’s school to tell her the good news of an art spot opening for her, where she discovers that Kimi dropped art like a hot potato. The mom was surely a hot potato when she found out.

I kind of understood where the mom was coming from with her anger. I think she was equal parts angry that Kimi lied to her about not being in the art program anymore and not practicing her “craft,” but I think the real hurt came from feeling like her daughter was changing and that Kimi didn’t love the same thing she did anymore. For some parents, they want their child to be just like them down to the hair, the clothes, the career. For Kimi’s mom, she always thought that Kimi would be just like her—– a successful artist. So when Kimi claims not to be interested in art like her mom is, the mom’s let down because she always had this idea of what her daughter would be and to know that Kimi wasn’t going to follow in her footsteps anymore made her lash out in anger and hurt because she just wanted her daughter to be like her. There was also this one part in the book where Kimi talks about how her mom was young and gave up her dream of art to take care of her. So part of Kimi felt like she had to do art and be an artist as a way to repay her mom when she gave up her dream to start a family.

The mom kind of overreacted about the whole dropping out of the art program thing and how she was like “I don’t even know you anymore.” The dad was sweet about it and tried to be the mediator between them.

With Kimi feeling uninspired and her mom mad at her, she took that as a chance to get away. In some ways I think Kimi running across many oceans to get away from her problems wasn’t the right thing to do because they always say you should never run away from your problems and face up to them. But I guess in some cases you have to run away to see what you left behind and how you can move forward. So I liked the whole idea of her going to Japan to meet her grandparents and to find herself.

The whole beginning portion of Kimi going to Japan was kind of repetitive with Kimi always thinking “this is my journey of self-discovery.” After the first few lines of that it just felt redundant to keep hearing how she went to Japan to find herself because I understood it loud and clear that she was lost and confused—literally. She got lost and confused at the train station and distracted by a girl’s dress. I really enjoyed the cultural aspect of this book overall from understanding that you should research a country or a place you visit to understand their customs and mannerisms. It’s kind of crazy to think that some places have these different ways of living that your so used to when you’ve lived somewhere else you’re whole life. So I found it interesting that in Japan it’s considered rude to walk and eat at the same time or to give people compliments or accept them because it sounds like you’re boasting about yourself. I know that you’re not supposed to tip in Japan and I think that slurping your soup is a sign of respect, but I’m not quite sure about that last one. So if you’re going to Japan or anywhere really, I think the biggest tip I can give you is to research, research, research.

Meeting the grandparents was interesting. I quite liked the Ojiisan (grandpa) because he seemed friendly and more open to Kimi rather than the Obaasan (grandma) who turned her nose up at Kimi and didn’t take Kimi’s compliments well. I was kind of put off by the Obaasan at first because of how closed off she seemed, but then I thought maybe that’s her natural way because some older individuals just have that natural demeanor that demands respect. Later on we learn that the Ojiisan sent Kimi the plane ticket and the letter without the Obaasan noticing and that was why she was so closed off—–she just didn’t know Kimi was coming until she actually came. So it made sense why she was reserved because, heck, her husband went behind her back to bring her granddaughter whom she never met or talked to to come stay with them.

The whole family dynamic was well-thought out and I loved the parallel and contrast between the fight between the obaason and Kimi’s mom and Kimi’s mom and Kimi. It really complemented the situations nicely and got Kimi to see how she didn’t want to lose her mom and turn out like the grandparents and their daughter—years of not talking.

What really made me disheartened was how much you could tell the grandparents regretted creating this unspoken divide with their daughter. They kept the mom’s childhood stuffed animal, Meiko, on her bed as if the mom would one day return and cuddle with it in her bedroom again. The grandpa would write letters to the mom about how much he missed her, but he never sent those letters because I think part of him was scared that she wouldn’t respond and that would hurt more. And maybe he also felt like it wasn’t his place to talk to her after the way they left things. The Obaasan also lived with a lot of regret too. On that mannequin form thing was this beautiful dress that the Obaasan had been making for the better part of twenty or more years so that when her daughter (Kimi’s mom) graduated, she could wear the dress. But the mom never went to the graduation in America, so the dress was unfinished. I feel like the dress was also unfinished because if the Obaasan finished making it, it would feel like she was really closing up a chapter in her life with her daughter—-a chapter she had no closure on. So having that dress not be done was the Obaasan’s way of holding onto the possibility that her daughter and her would reconcile and that one day that dress could be mended and finished like the ruined relationship between her daughter and herself could be mended and their feud finished.

Beginning to see where her grandparents were coming from, I loved when Kimi started to write her mom all these emails about her love of fashion. It took a lot of courage for Kimi to send those emails unlike how the grandpa didn’t send his. I applaud Kimi for finding that bravery to be honest with her mom and to mend things before it was too late. I was kind of upset with the mother though because she wouldn’t respond to the emails. I mean your daughter is baring her soul out to you about something she loves and she has the GUTS to send her soul to you as a way to get you to understand where she’s coming from and you have the AUDACITY to not respond back? Do not leave your daughter hanging like that! The rudeness. Like mother like daughter, I’m I right? I’m joking. But no seriously, the mom could have given a thumbs up emoji or could have been like K or something. Speaking of emojis though, there was this funny part where Kimi mentioned how she taught her mom to use emoji’s and how the eggplant emoji was an exclamation point 😆! Gosh, for the mom’s sake, I hope she never sends an eggplant emoji to anyone 😂!

But where was I?

Yes, the emails. I just loved the emails too because in those emails, you really see the passion for fashion translate to Kimi’s words. And we all know it. I know it. You know it. The grandma knows it. Santa knows it. The Easter bunny knows it.

We all know it. Except Kimi.

What do we know?

We know that Kimi LOVES fashion and creating clothes that remind her of a good memory in her life or that expresses her love of clashing color and the vibrancy of life.

Every letter she wrote had a memory of how much she loved fashion from the art jacket she made to the stained dress that she took to the carnival. Kimi kind of reminds me of Harper Finkle from Wizards of Waverly Place in that way—how they created the coolest, funest outfits. Every letter was her origin story and roadmap of love and care for fashion. But the thing was, Kimi couldn’t see how much she loved fashion and how real and how important it was to her because she was too caught up in this idea that fashion wasn’t a stable career, but just a hobby.

And I just wanted to shake her because it didn’t take a genius or a trip to Japan to figure out that she was going to come to terms with loving fashion and accepting it as a bigger part of her life. I mean, fashion was Kimi.

She really got out of her head about it just being a hobby when she meets a dancing piece of mochi with googly eyes on its head like that childhood show called Oobi and Uma. If you know, you know 🤪. Well, Mr. Dancing Mochi was none other than Japanese native, Akira. You gotta love Akira, the dancing piece of mochi. I mean the whole meet cute was just as the name makes it out to be: cute. Kimi was laughing at him because he had this whole routine and was really selling it and then Akira notices her laughing at him and calls her out on it. It starts this whole cute flirtatious thing that leads to them hanging out more. I understand the whole appeal of hanging out with a cute dancing mochi dude, but still she was in a different country and was hanging out with a stranger. Kind of sketch in some other cases if you ask me, but hey, do it for the YA!

Akira is the type of person who puts others before himself, which I love. I also love how he says he likes mysteries and how he is going to help Kimi solve this big mystery: who she is and her passion. If a random, cute, Japanese stranger is going to help you figure out who you are and what you like, then please sign me up! Akira could start a side business helping lost Americans find themselves. They’re cute suffice to say.

Their relationship and outings were beyond adorable and fun. I loved when they went to the temple to feel enlightened. Then Kimi gets up the courage to squeeze through the Buddha’s nostril so that in another life, her soul will be enlightened. Her going through the nostril kind of symbolized to me, her trying to do something on the whim and being spontaneous about things. Which brings me to this other aspect of Kimi. She’s someone who always lives inside her head or in this fantasyland; she’s a dreamer not a doer. And part of the reason she met Akira was because she was a doer and she actually talked to him and went out with him rather than hide away and imagine all the things she would say to a cute boy she didn’t know. So her going through the nostril and being with Akira was her stepping out of her fantasy land and living her life.

I also liked when they went to that garden thing with all the bamboo, giving Kimi inspiration to sketch what she saw. I also enjoyed when he took her on a cheap date! 😆 Not that that’s a bad thing, but I thought it was utterly hilarious that out of all the places in Japan that he could have taken her, he takes her to a McDonald’s. You gotta love the convenience and cheapness of a McDonald’s. It was fun to see the international food selection of a Japan McDonald’s with the whole Ebi Filet-O. The way that Kimi makes it sound, makes me want to try it and this is coming from someone who doesn’t like burgers or the Filet-O-Fish unless it’s lent.

I just loved it all.

Their relationship seemed to be going well, but they both never knew they felt more for each other until they talked about it out of anger. I was laughing my butt off with the whole idea of their first kiss. So here Kimi is fantasizing about having the perfect first kiss like they make out to be in movies with the rain and the alleyway and what do you know? After their deer date, there was rain and they ran into a dark alleyway and in Kimi’s head rang the chanting texts of her friends Bex and Atsuko saying Kiss! Him! Kiss! Him! And I thought they were going to kiss because DUUUUHHH and can we talk about how he gave her his jacket like it would give her warmth or protect her in the rain, but his jacket was soaked too? It’s the thought that counts, right?

So Kimi leans in to kiss him because it was the PERFECT moment and what does he do? He leans back and says they should get out of the rain!!! MY HEART BROKE FOR HER!!! Like how awkward is that? To lean in for a kiss from a boy you like and then to get shut down. My heart. The mortification. I was embarrassed for her.

But then they talked about how he backed away because the whole day she was pulling away from him whenever he tried to touch her and it was just this big whole miscommunication thing and then they finally did kiss and it was perfect. Loved that for them.

The thing was that Kimi was only there for a few more weeks and she loved Akira, but didn’t know what would happen to them when she went back. Both of them knew it, so Akira did what Taylor Swift sang out best as “You gotta leave before you get left.” So he backed away from Kimi for a while because if he ended things now, it wouldn’t hurt as much. And what a douche move if I’m being honest. I get that it’s going to hurt, but gosh, breaking her heart like that without even working though it, coward move dude!

Akira also had his Uncle’s mochi stand to think about. The thing about Akira I also loved was his caring heart. His Uncle was his right hand man and who he would do anything for, even run around in a ridiculous mochi outfit. But the rent at the market was rising and the Uncle couldn’t afford to keep his stand open unless he had more help and Akira was that help. So instead of going to medical school like Akira wanted, he figured he had to help his Uncle with the stand because that was all his Uncle had and that was what the Uncle loved. Akira, again puts everyone before himself, and it saddened me that he would even think about giving up his dreams of being a doctor to work at a mochi stand. I get his love for mochi, but he would mention random medical facts all the time. That was his passion.

As much as Kimi was slowly discovering the importance of fashion in her life, Akira was losing sight of his.

So with her love life on the back burner, Kimi started to focus on her family. If there’s one thing I love more than a romance book, is a book with a good family story line too. I loved the conversations she would have with her Ojiisan. He’s such a fun-loving guy to be honest. I loved how they bonded over candy and I loved the part at the end where he took her to the market and bought a whole bunch of candy for her to take back home. The Ojiisan really is a sweetheart. He also opened up to Kimi during this part about how he was the one to send the letter and the whole Obaasan only just found out. I really liked the part where he was like I sent the letter so that I could get to know my granddaughter. If that doesn’t melt your ice cold mochi heart, I don’t know what will! So cute! 💜 I just loved that!

There was also that part where she goes to another temple with her Ojiisan and she has to squeeze into yet another something else for good luck, and I was just sitting there thinking, darn. This girl has to squeeze through loops and hoops for a lot of things. Kind of oddly funny 🤪.

I also loved the whole moment when Kimi was looking for the toilet paper because she used it all up and she didn’t want to be rude and leave an empty roll, so she looked high and low for it, only to find her Obaasan’s sewing room. I thought that was such a nice touch to the story–not the toilet paper part, but finding the sewing room 😂. Seeing the Obaasan’s sewing room kind of made me see the Obaasan in a new light. It gave the Obaasan more depth rather than being the reserved, uptight grandma, she was a grandma who had a story. I think that the Obaasan loved fashion more than she made it out to be and that that’s where Kimi got her love of fashion too. I loved how Kimi and the Obaasan really started to bond after the discovery of the sewing room. There was something about the Obaasan that just came across lighter. I loved when the Obaasan took her to that tiny cottage village sewing room or to take her to find fabric so that she could teach Kimi how to make that shirt she loved. When looking at the fabric pieces, Kimi was going to choose a black piece because it was demure and more in style with what she thought her Obaasan would love and it’s kind of like Kimi to choose what other people would want rather than what she wants. But when her Obaasan asked her if she liked it, Kimi knew deep in her heart that she didn’t and instead chose the fabric that spoke to her.

And I love the Obaasan and how direct she is. She makes Kimi really own up to who she is and what she wants—-she brings out this assuredness in Kimi. I think for so long she was a people pleaser and didn’t want to hurt others and I get that, but I loved that Kimi was finally owning up to what she loved and who she was.

“The thing is . . . Mom didn’t smile a ton when I was a kid. Money was so tight, she was barely speaking to . . . um, well, you and Ojiisan. Working all these jobs, not sleeping, hardly at all. So that smile she gave me was a big deal. She actually started painting again because of me and my dumb little watercolors . . .

“And then you continued painting?”

“Yes. I just kept doing it. If you tallied up all the hours I’ve spent waiting over the course of my life, it would probably be more hours than I’ve spent doing anything else. I mean I like it. But . . “

“But you don’t love it,” Grandma says. “It does not speak to your soul.”

. . .”I have to say it out loud and to the correct person,” I say. “But I’m afraid that if I say this out loud . . . I don’t know. I can’t disappoint my mother. I don’t want all her hard work and sacrifices to mean nothing. And I’m so scared. . . .” I trail off and hiccup, a rogue tear sliding down my cheek.

“You are scared that you and your mother will say things that cannot be unsaid and barely speak to each other for twenty years,” my obaasan says, and it’s not a question. She knows. “You are scared of losing her.”

(pg. 214-5)

This was the moment that I felt Kimi really came to terms with everything. I think a big part of her knew why she ran away from her parents and why she lived in fantasyland all the time—-it was because she never wanted to say things that she could never take back and would make the situation all too real and complicated. She didn’t want history to repeat itself with her and her mom. So as much as she liked art, she didn’t love it. It always felt like an obligation she had to do to make her mom happy and proud; it was also a way to give back to her mom and all she had done for her. There was this moment in the beginning of the book where Kimi just stared at this blank canvas in her room and to me I saw it as her way of not knowing what the future held for her and that’s why she was scared to paint—-that’s why she couldn’t paint. Art was never her future. Fashion was. Talking to her Obaasan about it and actually owning up to how important it was to her and how she loved it, meant the world to me because as much as I knew Kimi was going to come to that realization, it was the journey that touched me.

So as a way to show her mom how much she’s grown and what she knows what she wants to do, she creates this dress worthy of her spring break.

But before that, she makes amends with Akira who tried to fix what he so obviously wronged. He sent Kimi an Ebi Filet-O and annotated papers of the best fashion schools and his opinions and ideas for her because he believed in Kimi to go to fashion school. I loved how they made up and she gave him a medical jacket she made out of the pages of a medical textbook. What a Kimi Original indeed 💗. She also gives Akira this whole speech about how he shouldn’t give up on his dream before she said goodbye. I was cracking up and touching my heart when Akira chased after her because some women asked Kimi if she was in danger 😂. But it was so cute that he ran after her!

I am fully aware of how many times I have said cute, but I’m not stopping now 😆.

Their last date was beyond CUTE, and I mean that. I love how they went on this hike and he planned this whole mochi gift thing with the words. GET YOU A PERSON WHO PUTS IN AS MUCH EFFORT AS AKIRA DOES!! 👏🏼

The first word was climb for their hike. Then they did a whole cleansing thing before hiking where they wrote a wish. The next word under the mochi was hope because that was what Kimi gave Akira! I SCREAMED!!!! CUUUUUTE 🥺! At the top of the hike, she ate her next mochi where the word was unlimited, endless, and boundless. Kimi thought it was meant for the infinite view they saw, but to Akira it also meant that he wanted Kimi to remember that her dreams were not limited and that she should continue to do what inspired her. I SWEAR! COOOO CUTE! The thought! It’s guys like Akira that gives me hope that men do have brain 😅 .I’m joking! Then they talked about their wish and how she wished she could have another day like this with him. And it opened up this conversation of communicating past this spring break to see where things go no matter the distance, which I loved! They were at least going to try to make things work because they loved each other and sometimes all you have to do is try, ne? The last mochi she ate was strawberry, much like the mochi Akira first gave her when they met, and the word under that was . . . can you guess?

It’s something cute.

LOVE!

I melted.

Literally.

🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

There are no words to how C-U-T-E that was.

Gosh. I love you so mochi too!

But enough of my overwhelming feelings, I loved when Kimi got back home to her dad and her friends who missed her. I’ve hardly talked about the friends, but they’re such a good group of people who were supportive of her and stuck with her throughout this whole trip. Like as much as you should get you a man like Akira, get you friends like Bex and Atsuko.

I stand, smooth my skirt, and square my shoulders. It’s time to show Mom the artist I’ve become.”

(pg. 296)

Then comes the moment where Kimi made her grand debut to her mom of the dress she created. When she walked out of her room with her head held high and her skirt flowing low, I felt nothing but pride at how far Kimi had come. I absolutely loved the fact that her dress represented how she went from a literal artist to a fashion artist and how her journey—-the self-discovery from her sketches, the bamboo she saw, and to her mom’s drawings. Every part of her dress had meaning and I was living for it!

Her mother was quiet at first, but then she talked to Kimi about how she got all the emails and how she didn’t know how to respond. The mom could see how much Kimi loved fashion and how much it meant to her, that she felt bad for not giving her the space to figure out what she wanted to do. I loved that they made up and that her mom was accepting of Kimi and her form of being an artist. I also love how the dad was always supportive of Kimi too. When he asked her if he should hold her spot at Liu Academy and when she said no and she had a plan, he didn’t question her, but trusted her. I loved that.

I also loved how intuitive the mom was in knowing there was more to the mochi sketch.

The last chapter of the two weeks later was what we all needed to get the uplifting closure from Kimi and how life went on. I enjoyed how it showcased both Kimi and the mom as artists side by side. I also like how the dad was taking pictures of the art pieces from the show to show Obaasan and Ojiisan back home because the whole family was talking again. My heart truly swelled at that—how a broken relationship was mending 💗. The mom was given the Ojiisan’s letters he never sent her and then he read them and then she started to FaceTime then and it was so cute because the Obaasan didn’t know how to use the Skype 😂. Heck, I don’t know how to use the Skype. Is it a weird quirk that I like when older people say things like the Google or the internet? like it needs another word to add to it. I also liked how it became this possibility that they would visit America one day because that meant that maybe the yukata the Obaasan never finished would finally be completed for her daughter to wear, maybe at an art show?

We also had to have a little Akira there too. I thought it was beyond CUTE that he sent her mochi all the way from Japan as good luck. Get you a person who sends you mochi halfway across the world 💗. I liked how we got to see their relationship past spring break and how they were really trying to make it work. I think that’s a thing we don’t see much of with some books because sometimes a person leaves and then the love interest comes back or something and then BAM, the book’s done. So it was nice to see them working out. I thought for a second that Akira would pop up or make a surprise appearance, but he didn’t. Mochi’s the next best thing though.

The ending ended on a sweet note much like good tasting mochi. I love how it was all about how Kimi didn’t know what the future held with her relationship or what her journey will be with school, but she was optimistic and hoped that there would be more moments with her family.

“But I do know this: There are so many amazing experiences in my future. So many more moments like this. They extend in front of me like the beautiful scarlet tunnel of torii gates. Endless, boundless, unlimited. And I’m going to enjoy every single one of them.”

“Ah, this photo,” Mom says, shaking her head and tapping the phone screen. “Not every good, hmm?”

I rest my head on her shoulder. “I think it’s perfect.”

(pg. 307-8)

A perfect ending indeed. The photo of the mom and the family was anything but perfect, but the moment was because there was so much too look forward to and to hope for. I loved that 💗. It really ended the story on a good note that makes you feel like there’s going to be nothing but good days for these characters,, and sometimes that’s all you can hope for for them once a book is done. I absolutely love Kimi and her family and the whole dynamics of the story.

I truly believe she had to journey far to understand who she was all along. I also think it helped to be closer to her roots and to understand her family history to make things better. It also helped that she fell in love. Something I really enjoyed about Kimi though was her overall growth from someone who was so lost and confused and scared to make things real, to someone who learned that you have to speak up for what you feel and what you want. No one’s going to understand you if all you do is live in your head and beat around the bush, you have to be more assertive. And as someone who is kind of a pushover, I know that being assertive is hard to do.

There was one moment in the book that I truly felt down to my core that I thought I would touch on.

“My eyes widened, a bright thread of excitement flowing through my views, worming its way into my gut, and exploding in my chest.

. . .But here’s the thing: None of that stops me from wanting it.”

(pg. 236)

I feel like if you read this and you have a passion you absolutely love, you can understand this quote soooo much. I get the same “thread of excitement flowing through my views, worming its way into my gut, and exploding in my chest” feeling that Kimi gets from fashion whenever I read or write. Because those are my passions. And sometimes when things get hard with writing or what I love to do, I think nothing sums it up better than the last part of the quote because no matter how hard it seems to get, none of those road bumps that I have to jump over, stops me from wanting it. And I think that if you have a passion that brings you the same type of feeling that Kimi gets from making clothes and I get from writing. I hope that nothing stops you from wanting it and chasing after you passions and dreams.

If you read this book, what was your favorite part? Least favorite part? What’s your favorite type or mochi? I like strawberry ice cream mochi or any ice cream mochi 😄.

Let me know below in the comments as I love hearting from you all 💕

And as always, with love,

Review

4.89 Full Bloom Flowers

Characters: Every character in this book really touches you in the best way. You become emotionally invested in everyone from Kimi, to her friends, to Akira, and to her family. They’re all such good people.

Plot: I love when a book has all my favorite things in one place: romance, family, and Asian culture. As being someone who is Asian, it’s always refreshing to see people kind of like me in a book because for a long time we were underrepresented in media outlets. I also love the family dynamics and how the characters learned from their pasts to create a better future for themselves and their families.

Writing: So easy to fall into and get lost in Japan with Kimi 💗

Romance: CUTE CUTE CUTE, and oh yea CUUUUTEEE 🥰