Bookish Brews Snapshot
Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
Izumi loves her role of a normal girl, just out of the spotlight, hanging out with her best friends. Until one day one of her best friends does some internet stalking and finds out that Izumi’s father is none other than the Crowned Prince of Japan.
🎂 Coming of Age 🍃 Easy Reading 🌳 Family Focused 💗 Heart Warming
- Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Book Review
Charming, beautiful, validating, clever, personal, relatable, irreplaceable
Tokyo Ever After is a book I have been waiting to read since I was a little girl watching The Princess Diaries. I always had in my mind this little voice saying, “oh, but that would never happen to you, I mean, you’re Asian.” And as much as I loved the Princess Diaries, I never, ever, thought for one second that a similar story could even exist. Until Tokyo Ever After. I can’t even begin to tell you how monumental this book was for me.
Tokyo Ever After follows Izumi, a normal Asian girl who has found a home in her small group of Asian girlfriends in a town that is almost entirely white. While trying to find out more information about her father, one of Izumi’s friends finds him, but he is not what they expect. It turns out “Mak from Harvard” is the Crown Prince of Japan and Izumi is his only heir, making her a Japanese princess.
It was such an easy read, but I found myself crying nearly every chapter. It was even worse because I read nearly the entire book waiting in line for rides at Universal Studios (the lines are worse than at Disneyland!!), so I was crying in public the entire time. When I tell you how much I cried, I should probably also tell you that this book is not sad. It was just really personal and emotional for me. It hit me so personally that I couldn’t help it. Every small detail hit me so hard, that I can confidently say this is one of my new favorite books.
The absolute best part about this story was that, even though Izumi is Japanese, Emiko Jean wrote this story so that it isn’t completely exclusive to the Japanese experience. Izumi’s friend group are all Asian Americans with ancestors from different places, but they all band together as best friends, which is such a common experience for Asian Americans. As Izumi was learning about Japan, it didn’t feel so much as exclusive to Izumi and Japan, it just felt like a girl, discovering her roots and learning about her heritage. That balance was by far the best part of the book for me, because it made Izumi’s journey relatable to me, even though I don’t share Japanese roots like she does.
Tokyo Ever After is one of my new favorite books. It was validating to me in a way I never expected it to be. It’s the book I’ve been waiting for, ever since I watched The Princess Diaries as a kid when I thought only white girls could become princesses. Something I don’t think anymore. Thank you Emiko Jean.
I could go on and on about how much this book meant to me but I’ll leave you with just one more thing that blew me away. Though there is a love story in this, as we could expect from a YA princess story, but to me, the true love story was between Izumi and Japan. Her reconciliation with her past and her heritage had all of the emotions that we normally assume we will see from a romantic partner. But the love story was much stronger between her and Japan. It was absolutely beautiful. As much as I loved the love story between Akio and Izumi, the brief love affair turning into a lifelong companionship with Japan was one of the most validating things I’ve ever read. It made me feel like maybe one day I will be ready to have a love affair and lifelong companionship with Vietnam. I hope one day that is as true to me as it became to Izumi.
Book Aesthetic
There were so many things I wanted to throw into this mood board, but I just couldn’t fit all of the pictures in the world. There was a moment where I thought this would have to be two separate mood boards – I really did love it enough to do that! But in the end, I think that I got it together enough to make something at least a little bit worthy of this book. I’m still stunned at how validated I felt reading this book, and how simple it can be to finally decide to claim your own heritage. I went with blue tones to hopefully portray that calm and serene feeling of finally accepting who you are, and white tones as a reminder of how simple and elegant the solution is: claim it for yourself.
