Iris is a Dutch girl whose parents are divorced. She and her older brother want their parents back together, so they're disheartened when their mother accepts a job at Stanford in the United States. Iris moves with her mother, her grandmother, her older brother and her younger sisters who are twins.
Iris fits in fairly quickly and grows to love life in the US. Her main struggle is her older brother's increasingly assholish behavior and his stupid plans to break up their father and his girlfriend, although she also faces being upset when her mother starts to date a colleague. The increased stress causes her grandmother, who is Iris's best friend, to have multiple heart attacks, and most of this occurs while Iris is bedridden from illness. Her father comes over from the Netherlands to help out, which creates hope in Iris and her brother, but that's dashed when he reveals that his girlfriend is pregnant.
Iris's grandmother recovers, her brother finally stops being a douche, and the whole family supports the mother when she's offered a position to stay at the university.
My biggest problem with this book is that the character of the father's girlfriend is presented as a dismissive, selfish twat who has no interest in developing a relationship with her boyfriend's kids. She even calls up while he's helping out while the grandmother is in the hospital recovering and bitches at him for not telling them she's knocked up. I hated her character, which is why the next bit really pissed me off.
You see, one of my most hated tropes is the giving up of a prized possession (typically a toy) for someone else as a cliched sign of maturity.
Iris has a stuffed fox that helped her through her anxiety, which was caused by the divorce. I think it was a childhood toy. This is something with great meaning to her. Yet at the end, she mails it to the father's new kid. I wouldn't have as big an issue with this if they'd ever redeemed the bitchy girlfriend, but you know that toy's just gonna end up in the garbage. Send your new half-sibling a brand new toy and keep your nostalgic one.
You never have to give up a childhood object to be mature.
Never ever fucking EVER.
There is nothing wrong with keeping a nostalgic toy. Giving it up does not make you mature.
Mai lost her arm to bone cancer and when her father loses his job in Tokyo, she relocates with her family to Oahu, Hawaii. They live with her uncle, aunt and a female cousin who's Mai's age. Mai quickly makes friends through her cousin, but still struggles with bullying from two girls in her gym class. She struggles with gym class itself, because the instructor, who's very nice, takes a little while to figure out something she can do.
This is actually my biggest problem with the book. I mean, I know the bullies in gym are a major part of the plot, but what kind of sadistic school forces a one-armed girl to take gym? Like really.
One of Mai's new friends is Iekeka, whose parents own a surf shop. She's obsessed with surfing and tells Mai about a famous one-armed female surfer. Mai slowly learns to surf and then learns the famous woman is coming to Oahu for a competition for young surfers. After a fun sequence where the girls earn the $100 entry fee for Mai, she competes and while she doesn't win, she forms such a bond with the famous surfer that she's invited to the woman's weekend surf camp.
The other main plotline in the book, aside from the surfing and bullying, is the family's struggling restaurant. It ends up succeeding, of course, thanks to the sushi cuisine from Mai's dad, but it takes a bit for the success to come.
Mai's book felt much better-written than Iris's and is definitely a more enjoyable read.
These are both on Amazon in paperback and ebook form.
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