Can’t Wait Wednesday #25

Can’t Wait Wednesday/Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Wishful Endings and before it was hosted at Breaking the Spine. It was made to showcase future releases we’re excited for.

My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life by Rachel Cohn

Expected publication: December 18th 2018

In the Land of the Rising Sun, where high culture meets high kitsch, and fashion and technology are at the forefront of the First World’s future, the foreign-born teen elite attend ICS-the International Collegiate School of Tokyo. Their accents are fluid. Their homes are ridiculously posh. Their sports games often involve a (private) plane trip to another country. They miss school because of jet lag and visa issues. When they get in trouble, they seek diplomatic immunity.

Enter foster-kid-out-of-water Elle Zoellner, who, on her sixteenth birthday discovers that her long-lost father, Kenji Takahari, is actually a Japanese hotel mogul and wants her to come live with him. Um, yes, please! Elle jets off first class from Washington D.C. to Tokyo, which seems like a dream come true. Until she meets her enigmatic father, her way-too-fab aunt, and her hyper-critical grandmother, who seems to wish Elle didn’t exist. In an effort to please her new family, Elle falls in with the Ex-Brats, a troupe of uber-cool international kids who spend money like it’s air. But when she starts to crush on a boy named Ryuu, who’s frozen out by the Brats and despised by her new family, her already tenuous living situation just might implode.

My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life is about learning what it is to be a family, and finding the inner strength to be yourself, even in the most extreme circumstances.

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Thoughts

I don’t know a right lot about this book in terms of genres but a lot of other reviewers seem to be hinting at contemporary. My parents would wonder what has changed in me as I normally only read fantasy but here I’m intrigued to read this because of the setting and what others have described as a guidebook to Tokyo within a story. There doesn’t seem to be a high general rating for this and some reviews have gone to say the characters are one-dimensional 😛 I’ll find out myself, but most of all this book reminds me of the time I went to Tokyo on my first ever visit to Japan. It was awesome and I’ve always wanted to go back one day but my parents found it rather overwhelming in terms of crowds and noise, I just drank it all in 😉 So I hope to save this for a travel read for if I ever return to Japan and hope my library will get it in…