Review: This Time Will Be Different

This Time Will Be Different by Misa Sugiura
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This Time Will Be Different is an engaging YA novel that tackles the racism that lingers after the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans, reparations, along with a variety of challenges that young people face. CJ is the granddaughter of a man whose life was upended by the internment during WWII. Her mother, Michelle, and aunt, Hannah, are continually battling over old hurts, including the death of their father. Michelle, a pragmatic and cold-seeming executive has beaten the odds, achieving success at a major company in the Silicon Valley in spite of being Japanese, female, and a single parent. Hannah is the far less pragmatic younger sister who, after suffering from cancer at age 22, helps her sister raise her child while running the florist business that's been in the family for many years. The once profitable Heart's Desire flower shop has fallen on difficult times and Michelle has grown weary of keeping the business afloat with her hard-won cash. CJ has found that she has a gift for floral arrangements but what if the business goes under? What are her future plans for the future? When she finds out that the family that basically robbed her family during WWII may buy the shop to convert it into a venture capital development tank, she's outraged. At the same time she is dealing with her best friend Emily looking increasingly like she's falling for the girl that smashed her heart to smithereens in middle school. How much is CJ going to let the past determine her future, or that of her best friend's love life? And what about her own life, after mistakes with her first boyfriend seem to have made her distrustful of having a happy relationship with anyone? It's a long way to learning that while you can't change the past, you could perhaps try to make sure this time will be different.

This novel has frank discussions about teenage drinking, sex, pregnancy, abortion, homosexuality, and topics like racism and implicit bias. While some of the elements (for me, the flower meanings) seemed overdone, the quality of the relationships and CJ's capacity for frank self-examination (maybe with a bit of help from her friends or perhaps a kick from them) are quite well written. 

This book is a very solid summer read for teens and young adults. I will definitely look forward to reading Sugiura's next book.


I received a Digital Review Copy along with a paper review copy from Harper Teen in exchange for an honest review.
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