Fiction by Misa Sigiura
Seventeen-year-old CJ Katsuyama has recently discovered a love of flowers while helping her Aunt Hannah in the family flower shop. But her mother has much bigger ambitions; she wants CJ to go to business or law school and Make Something of Herself. In the meantime, Aunt Hannah has also hired a very cute boy to help in the shop as well. Also, CJ 's mother has never told her who her father is...
All of these elements are part of a normal mix for a coming-of-age story; what makes this book different is the characters. I really liked CJ and wanted her to find herself.
There's also the added element of CJ's Japanese heritage; the family flower shop is so much more than just a store to the Katsuyamas. The business had been stolen from CJ's great-grandparents during the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War Two and finally bought back by the family thirty years later. But now it seems they may lose it again.
This was a good story and I liked it. It did seem to have some awfully mature elements for a YA novel, so it's definitely for older teens.
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