From Little Tokyo, with Love by Sarah Kuhn is a modern fairy tale that celebrates Japanese American culture and the search for belonging. The protagonist, Rika, is refreshingly fierce and flawed, offering a unique perspective as she navigates her identity and anger toward the world around her. The vibrant setting of Little Tokyo adds charm and authenticity to the story. However, the pacing can feel uneven, with the romance sometimes overshadowing Rika’s personal growth. Additionally, the narrative can lean heavily on predictable tropes, which may disappoint readers looking for a less conventional plot. Still, it’s an enjoyable read with heartfelt moments.

A loose retelling of Cinderella, this story is about belonging and fitting in - to a community, to your family, to your own idea of who you are and should be.

Rika lives with her aunts - Auntie Suzie and Auntie Och - and her two cousins - Belle and Rory - after her mother, Suzy's sister, died during childbirth. Or did she? When Rika encounters famous actress Grace Kimura, she starts to wonder if she's been lied to her whole life. Maybe this is finally her chance to belong to someone, something. A family of her own.

This story delves into the difficulties of being biracial - the feeling of not being enough of one or the other to truly fit in. Not only that, but it's a story of female rage and how it's perceived and written off, more often than actually addressed. Rika grows up in the community of Little Tokyo, but her outbursts and anger often gets her into trouble and her biracial background often ostracizes her more as people decide she doesn't fit into their idea of the Japanese community.

There's a lot to break down, in terms of how people judge Rika from the start - when she's bullied and defends herself, she's to blame; when she's held back by her Aunt, she's seen as difficult; when a man, older than Rika, says racist things to her (think purity racism), she tells herself to treat him well because he's a customer. Some of these are Rika's own internalized assumptions about herself and her own biases clouding her judgement of her anger, but there's a lot to dig into when it comes to the xenophobic and closed off nature of some of these old school communities.

I really enjoyed the discussions around race and anger and the feeling of being too much and needing to adjust our personalities to fit other people's expectations of us - we get this from Rika, Henry, Suzy and Och, and Grace herself. I loved that this book breaks down some of these barriers and all the characters come together as a community in the end. It was really heartwarming and sparks great discussion.

My only complaint is the 48 hour "I love you"s said by our teen leads, but I did love their commitment and support of each other through the story, despite only knowing each other for a short time (the book takes place over a week, I think). The book does jump around a bit swapping from her quest to find her mother to Henry landing a part in a movie. I think this was done to show that even without her mother, Rika has built up a community around herself who's willing to go to bat for her. But I think this also pulled me away from the urgency of her quest to find out the truth.

All in all, a solid read that delves into some important subjects. I would definitely love to pick up more by Sarah Kuhn in the future!

TW: racism; mentions sexual content, teenage pregnancy

Plot: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
World Building: 4/5
Writing: 4.5/5
Pacing: 3/5
Overall: 4/5

eARC gifted via NetGalley by Viking Books for Young Readers via Penguin Young Readers Group in exchange for an honest review.

Well written with beautiful representation of an "outside" culture in a pop culture city such as LA. The main character was relatable and flawed and shed some light on Asian American Culture for those to be seen and for others to be educated.

I read this book about three years ago and I loved it! I posted a video about it on Tiktok when I read it, but I never transferred the review to NetGalley!

Cute, light-hearted, and sweet, From Little Tokyo, With Love explores the idea of what it means to belong—to a family, to different communities, to the world. It’s got some intense themes: race and biracial experience, mental health, family, tradition, motherhood, understanding emotion, self-discovery, abandonment. It sets the tone for a really positive story. There’s a lot of potential in this book. The story is sweet—a modern fairy tale. A girl meets a boy and he treats her with respect and supports her on her journey to reunite her with her long-lost mother, and they fall in love. It’s lots of cotton candy fluff.

Rika doesn’t really fit in. She is half-Japanese, she doesn’t know her mother, she is being raised alongside her cousins, and no one really seems to see her as she truly is. She is viewed as a troublemaker and a disruptor. Her community has latched on to every negative thing in her life and it torments her constantly. No one believes her capable of change. She feels so different than her princess-obsessed cousins. She likes demons and dark stories. She feels rage deep within her that she fights to quell. She feels intensely misunderstood. But when she meets Henry, that all changes. He SEES her. He knows her true self and loves her for it. For Rika, he is a breath of fresh air. As they embark on an epic quest to discover the truth about Rika’s mother, their relationship grows and blossoms.

I really enjoyed that the protagonist, Rika, truly does seem to have a significant development in her character. She’s aware of her flaws—perhaps a bit too aware and repetitive in her address of her flaws—but because of her awareness, she is constantly working to overcome her difficulties. She experiences real growth and change as the book progresses. She rises to a new level as the book concludes and we really see her strength, power, and agency triumph. She becomes a force for change and unity. It’s truly a beautiful and happy ending.

But there is a lot that is troubling and problematic in this book. Firstly, Rika’s rage. It’s mentioned repetitively to the point of annoyance. Rika honestly needs to be discussing her rage issues with a professional. She struggles with it daily and it consumes her wholly. Henry reframed and redirects it, labelling her “passionate” instead, but Rika truly believes herself to be full of darkness. Her self-image is not inline with who she really is and speaks to her self-esteem. It’s concerning how often that she has the internal struggle to tamp down her anger. Rika repeatedly refers to herself as a monster. It’s really hit home too frequently. She’s a young girl with a lot going for her and for her to have such a negative self-image and to be so out of control where there is so much good in her life actually detracts from the overall story arc. It begins to jar the reader out of the story after a while.

Secondly, I had an immense amount of difficulty trying to understand the Little Tokyo community’s view of Rika as a whole. Based on a few actions from her youth, she has been identified as the black sheep. She is not Japanese enough, a “half breed,” too disruptive, always living up to the negative image that they have of her. She doesn’t love princesses the way her cousins do. She’s not quiet and demure. She has regular angry outbursts. The community’s intense judgement boardering on cruel and immature. It’s totally unfounded. Rika is so young. She is heavily involved in her community through her family restaurant and through her dedication to her dojo, yet she is labelled the outcast. It just doesn’t really make sense as to why she’s such an outsider.

Overall though, it is a light story with some great discussions. It makes topics such as mental health, LGBTQ relationships, understanding one’s emotions, and new romantic relationships accessible to younger readers. One thing to note though, as a warning, this book does have pretty aggressive throughout which seems quite excessive for a book that’s targeted at 14+.

So here’s the thing: I have had this book on my shelf for a long time now and I have not once attempted to read it. I’m so sorry for accepting the request on this and not reading it but I can only blame my baby Bookstagrammer self who was so excited to be a part of the Penguin Teen influencer list and requested all the books.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group for this DRC.
Fairy tale fun with this YA romp through Los Angeles searching for a long lost mother and finding a cute boy.


#FromLittleTokyoWithLove #NetGalley

What a cute and heart warming story. The representation in this book for biracial teens is great, and i know quite a few who would love to see more of this as well. Over all this book was enjoyable and i have passed its title on to other so they can look it up and read it too.

I appreciate the opportunity to read and review this book at the time prior to release. Unfortunately my taste in books have changed a good bit in the last couple of years, and I am not reading as many YA books. Also as a mood reader, it can be quite difficult at times to read book around the time of release. If I read and review the book in the future, I will add my review here. Thanks again for the opportunity.

This book was just sadly not for me! I was hoping for something different but it turned out to be something I was not expecting, which is okay and I'm sure someone else would love it!

To me, this was nothing special. It was an enjoyable book, but there are dozens like this and I didn't feel like this one stood out from the crowd.

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

DNF - I read 10% of this book, but the main character acted very young. I read YA books all of the time, but I prefer when the main character acts older and speaks/think in a more mature manner. I enjoyed all of the references in this story.

I've found this review a bit difficult to write, since I keep getting distracted by working on a time machine to go back and smack myself for not reading this faster. From Little Tokyo, with Love is a magical contemporary about a girl whose life doesn't seem magical at all— never quite feeling like she fits in due to the scandal of her birth, her mixed heritage, and being surrounded by bossy cousins who fit the 'princess' description much better than her, Rika has gone the opposite direction of the fairy tale life her circumstances set her up for. Who needs a prince or a ballgown when you have a kick-ass snake woman from mythology as an icon and a judogi instead?

But then her life turns upside down when she sees Grace Kimura, a famous rom-com actor, during the Nisei week parade. Or rather, Grace sees her, and suddenly Rika is sent on a very fairy tale journey with a sweet, incredibly attractive actor who is much more than meets the eye. But the closer she gets to a happy ending, the more she wonders whether it'd be better to pull back and protect her heart, or accept that maybe there are fairy tale endings for girls like her.

One thing that stood out to me about this book from the first page was the strong voice of our narrator. The book is from a first-person POV and Kuhn does a wonderful job of making you feel like you're right there in Rika's head. At first I struggled to connect and thought this was because I'm approaching an ugh, teenagers age, but as the book went on I started to realize that it was actually because I was getting too immersed. I saw a lot of myself and my own anger in Rika, and perhaps I was gearing myself for a narrative where the angry girl learns to let go and be calm.

But this book didn't let me down at all. I won't dive too much into it to avoid spoilers, but the way emotions are handled in this book really surprised me. I couldn't have imagined rating this less than four stars. All the important scenes between Rika's quest to find her mother, her interactions with her community, and her sweet romance were carefully written and had my heart beating. If you are a YA contemporary lover, this is definitely one you don't want to miss. Applications for the Henry Chen fan club are now open!

Good and cute romance with some fun mystery thrown in. I liked the humor and all the funny things that happened.

I am a huge fan of Sarah Kuhn’s Heroine Complex series, so picking up her YA writing was a no-brainer. From Little Tokyo, With Love is a modern fairytale about Rika, a biracial teen girl with badass judo skills and a temper. Orphaned after her mother died in childbirth and her father ran off, Rika has been raised by her Japanese aunts and has struggled all her life to feel like she truly belongs. She embarks on a quest around Los Angeles to pursue family secrets with the help of Hank Chen, a young actor who also struggles with biracial identity and bonds with Rika over their shared experience. As an angry teenager myself, so much of Rika’s internal strife really resonated with me. And while I’ve seen and enjoyed plenty of stories that are love letters to my home city of Los Angeles, the focus on the Little Tokyo neighborhood makes this book particularly special.

(From my Book Riot piece "8 Asian American YA Romances I Wish I Could Have Read in High School")

From Little Tokyo With Love by Sara Kuhn; Viking Books for Young Readers, 432 pages ($18.99) Ages 14 to 17.

...

Sara Kuhn weaves a real enchantment into this modern feminist fairy tale of a feisty "orphan" finding her birth family and her true love, complete with a dramatic Hollywood ending featuring a giant Cinderella ball gown. It's also a love letter to Los Angeles, featuring such wondrously described locations as the Santa Monica Pier, the Los Angeles Central Library and the closed zoo at Griffith Park.

As a half-Japanese orphan, 17-year-old Rika Rakuyama has always been made to feel she's a "mutt" who doesn't quite belong to her Little Tokyo community in Los Angeles, despite growing up with her two loving adoptive aunties and cousins Belle and Rory. A judo champion, she has a reputation for an explosive temper (which she refers to as her "kaiju" or giant monster temper) since biting an older judo opponent when she was 8 years old.

The action takes place during Nikkei Week, the annual festival in L.A.'s Little Tokyo neighborhood where movie star Grace Kimura is to be grand marshal of the parade. But Kimura happens to accidentally get a good look at Rika and then vanishes from public view, leaving Rika wondering if just possibly, Kimura might be her long-lost mother. Rika enlists Kimura's handsome young co-star Henry Chen in her quest to track her down.

Chapters are introduced with amusing fairy tale excerpts "She dreamed of kicking a-- and winning the regional judo championship ... Neither of these things happened, so she revealed herself to be a nure-onna (an actual monstrous mythical creature), transformed into a snake, and ate everyone's faces off."

The colorful setting of L.A.'s Little Tokyo and the honest portrayal of both good (beloved traditions) and bad (judgments, exclusion, racism) adds welcome depth to this very appealing love story.

I loved how the romance developed instead of having them go swoony swoon let's-have-sex-even-though-we-just-met sort of thing. Henry respected her as an individual with her own personality and hopes and dreams and everything. This was such a cute book overall.

This was just a fun read. I loved the way that the family aspect was woven in alongside the community elements and how both of those bolstered the romantic arc that was being told. It was all balanced so beautifully that I never thought one was overshadowing the other or was pulling focus to leave other elements underdone. It was a great time from start to finish, definitely one of the better afternoons I spent reading this year and would definitely recommend to my friends to pick up.

**Thank you to NetGalley, the author, & the publisher for a chance to read to & review an ARC of this book!**

Please find my extended feedback below...along with some spoilers (beware).
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Things I Liked:
-I really enjoyed the cultural elements of this story
-I liked the spunk of the main character
-I enjoyed the story and plot overall

Things That Didn't Sit Quite Right With Me:
-I felt that there was a good bit of "fluff" at times.

Overall, I gave this book 4 stars. It would be a good read for people who enjoy reading stories with strong cultural elements & a bit of mystery.