Review: "Halfway There" by Christine Mari

Halfway There by Christine Mari
Published October 2024 via Little, Brown Ink
★★★★

Growing up in the US, Mari always felt other—half Japanese and half American, born in one country but raised in another, part of her wondered whether she'd have fit in better if her family had stayed in Japan. And as a young adult, she had a chance to try out a different life for herself: she moved to Japan to study abroad, to buff up her Japanese, and to see if Tokyo was a place—the place—she could be the person she dreamed of being.

But as so often happens: wherever you go, there you are. Some things about Tokyo were just what Mari remembered or envisioned or loved—and other things were just like being in the US again but the reverse, and she didn't develop magical fluency in Japanese overnight, and, well, being a young adult is hard.

I picked this up partly because I have no resistance, natural or acquired, to moving-abroad books (whether expat or moving-back-to-homeland or otherwise), and partly because of the cover (read: I am shallow)—how pretty is that cover? The art inside is simpler, but still pretty, done largely in shades of grey and purple. I may eventually look up Mari's earlier travelogue about time spent in Tokyo as a teenager, but it looks like her art style has matured a lot since then, and for the time being I'm pretty happy keeping the art from Halfway There foremost in my memory.

Not always a happy memoir, but one that will resonate with teens and young adults who are struggling to find their way and their place in a world that doesn't always feel welcoming.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.