A big thank-you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for giving me a copy of this book for an unbiased review.

3.75/5 - Liked it quite a bit.

I've always rated books on a .5 scale, but this is the first time I really struggled to place a rating and resorted to 3.75. This is because I liked this book very much, but also found myself disappointed in the ending, making it difficult for me to rate it without being very specific.

"Fault Lines" is beautifully written. It's the kind of story where the reader must stop from time to time to savor the language, to fully immerse herself in the vivid scenery the writer has painted into her imagination. I felt myself inextricably tied to Mizuki. Her thoughts were raw and honest; her struggle to fit herself like a misshapen puzzle piece in the picture of her own life - relatable.

I found the discussion of Japanese norms fascinating and the characters fascinating. Mizuki was to me both a creature entirely foreign but also someone I could see myself being friends with - or someone I could even see myself being. The book itself reads as a fault line - a quiet sequence of rumblings that threaten to explode into something destructive. There's an underlying tension that pervades the narrative and I found this compelling and fascinating.

However, the ending to me felt far too convenient, almost as if the fault line had shifted and was no longer there. The tension that had been built up throughout the book faded into a movie-perfect resolution and although it was tied up so nicely, it felt unsatisfying and inauthentic, which was in direct contrast to the reason I had previously enjoyed the story so much.

I would still recommend this book to anyone looking to read an authentic story with a powerful narrator and a compelling study of modern Japanese culture. However, I wish that the ending had been as rich and complex as the rest of the story.

This was actually one of my favorite books of 2021 and I'm so glad that it got the attention it deserved because it's a great exploration of what being a woman and having desires means not just to yourself but to society as well. The unease that permeates this book is such a powerful reminder of how dangerous being a woman can feel these days.

A well-written debut novel that I feel many can connect to, in parts, at least. Emily Itami brings to life the stagnation feelings many come to feel when life just doesn't seem to be as exciting as it once was. But, is exciting what we are all after, or is it the stable life we built? I enjoyed reading Mizuki discover things about herself in the monotony of daily life, a good reminder to have. Thank you for the opportunity to read this early!

Really excellent novel that protrayed the urge to see what could be and what can be. I loved the authors authentic voice and the story was propulsive.

This is really well written and all the characters are real and understandable but its not my type of book.

Fault Lines delves into the life of a Japanese woman at a crucial juncture in her journey. She grapples with a sense of invisibility and a lack of connection within her marriage, where the roles of parenthood and conformity have left her emotionally and physically unfulfilled. She navigates her days as a devoted mother and a part-time Japanese language instructor to foreigners.

As she and her husband find themselves ensnared in the routine monotony of their marriage, diligently tending to their children but neglecting their own desires, a chance encounter with a man reshapes her world. Initially, their relationship is grounded in friendship, but as the boundaries between friendship and love begin to blur, she is compelled to reevaluate the direction her life should take.

"Faut Lines" is a masterfully crafted narrative that elegantly balances wit and tenderness. The author's keen focus on the choices we make and their profound impact on our lives adds depth to the storyline. The story is replete with unexpected turns and twists, and the protagonist's decisions are far from predictable, making the reading experience all the more enthralling. I loved this book so much and still find myself thinking about it months later.

I really loved this book! It is an amazing story that will stick with me, and I truly value those types of stories so much. I connected with the story & look forward to more books from this author!

Great first novel. Interesting and insightful look into Japan and a Japanese wife. An author I will keep an eye on.

A story of a woman who seemingly has everything she should want-a handsome husband, two children, and a perfect apartment in beautiful, exciting Tokyo, but feels like she’s lost herself in it all. A coming of age tale (which you know I love), but as a second act versus the first. Not so much a mid-life crisis, but a questioning of it all, via an affair with a charming restauranteur.

A story as old as time, but the expression of emotions (in relation to pressures put upon women by culture/society, Eastern vs Western ideals, finding fulfillment, knowing one’s self, motherhood, marriage, responsibility, and silent rage) on top of Emily Itami’s dry wit made it fresh and unique. I was continuously underlining sentences, chuckling, and tearing up.

This little debut packs a big punch-I can’t wait to see what Itami does next.

Fault Lines written by Emily Itami

Character-driven, slow-paced yet intimate.

Mizuki is a Japanese housewife that once had aspirations to be a singer in NYC. Now she's depressed, miserable sometimes suicidal because her life is stagnant & her previous life erased.

“My children,” she reflects. “My life’s work, my greatest loves, orchestrators of total psychological trauma and everyday destruction.” While her two children are most important to her, she feels she's lost herself completely. Her husband is extremely hardworking & often barely looks up from his screens to mind her.

After starting an affair with a successful restauranteur Kiyoshi, she finds herself & happiness again. As they navigate through Toyko's night life, sample foods, visit parks, and festivals together, she learns to love & laugh again. But soon she realizes she can only choose one of her lives.

Itami's descriptions of Japan in Spring & Summer are delightful. She places the reader right into the thoughts of Mizuki feeling unloved & under appreciated during these times and as Mizuki's mood changes, the seasons change as well. A dysthmic story that explores human flaws and fault lines - the cracks in her seemingly perfect life & marriage.

This story explores discovering that you no longer know who you are and what your life has become and how you explore your way back to you knowing yourself again. Mizuki no longer seems to know herself other than being a mother and a wife. She finds herself again through exploring who she used to be with someone new to her life that didn’t have any preconceived notions about her.

Good story. Hated the actions of the main character but understood why she did them. There is elements of emotional unfaithfulness in this book.

Where do I even start with this book. Magical! I absolutely loved it. The writing is excellent, the plot builds and ebbs and flows when you expect it to. The story line is nothing short of phenomenal. The characters jump off the page and leave you wanting to peer further into their lives,. I highly recommend this novel and look forward to future works by Emily.

It was a quick but good read. Mizuki is a housewife in Tokyo, Japan. She has a loving husband, two cute children and in a short a beautiful life. She is not happy and wants more out of life. She meets Kiyoshi, who owns restaurants and sees another side of life. With Kiyoshi her life is filled with fun and excitement. She gets to the point where she is leading a double life and must, of course select one. The book points out the pros and cons of each. Emily Itami skillfully navigates this so you feel like you are in Mizuki's mind.

This was an interesting tale on a marriage in the setting of Japan. It was a quick read that focused on the roles of husband and wife, where the husband is the provider and wife is the homemaker, mother, etc.

Fault Lines by Emily Itami is a NetGalley read that I have been putting off for far too long. The cover is what immediately caught my attention, but don't let that fool you because there is a lot going on underneath it! I don't read a whole lot of literary fiction but decided to take a chance on Itami's debut and I am very glad I did. It was really interesting reading from the viewpoint of Mizuki and I loved the Tokyo setting. I don't think I have read any other books set here and really enjoyed the way Itami described the city and the people in it. I wasn't sure what I was going to think about this novel since it is entirely focused on Mizuki's life as a wife and mother, but I ended up still being able to find her relatable. I don't have kids but could understand her frustrations (especially as a wife), and I could practically feel all of her emotions right along with her.

The audiobook for this one is quite lovely and narrated by Lydia Wilson. I felt like she put me right into Mizuki's shoes and I was really impressed by her narration. The audio of Fault Lines is SUPER short since this is a very short book, and I thought it was the perfect length. I don't know if I would have wanted it to be more than the 200-some pages it is, and I think Itami gave us everything we needed without being too wordy or overly descriptive. I was also a fan of the wit she managed to infuse into the story, and not only is Mizuki relatable, but she is also likable as well. I honestly don't really have anything else to say about this book as it is best to experience it for yourself. If you are a fan of literary fiction and character studies that really focus on one particular character's life, I would definitely recommend picking up Fault Lines.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Mizuki is a wife and mother struggling with her loss of identity. Her beliefs of what is truly important in life does not always match the Japanese Culture she was raised in and lives. She meets a man who challenges the limitations of her life. Mizuki must figure out what is important to her, who she presently is, and how she arrived there.

The idea of coming of age is sometimes wasted on the younger generation. Today the changing roles of women's lives allow for cyclical opportunities to explore who we are, what we want, and the options available to us. This was a quick read.

From a western perspective Mizuki is a bit whiny which surprised me considering she had lived in the United States for part of her youth. However, looking at her life from the perspective of her Japanese culture I felt sorry for Mizuki and the constraints she felt about her life.

From debut novelist Emily Itami comes FAULT LINES, an explosively resonant and shockingly witty look into the life of happy housewife Mizuki...who maybe isn’t so happy after all.

On the surface, Mizuki has it all. Her husband, Tatsuya, is a Japanese salaryman who recently has been promoted and takes good care of his family in their beautiful Tokyo apartment. They have two adorable children: 10-year-old Eri and four-year-old Aki. On top of that, she has a relatively successful career helping businessmen and their wives adapt to Japanese culture without offending anyone. Perhaps it is her nearly scientific investigation into her own country’s cultures, or the time she spent in America, or even her friendship with Eloise, a brash Parisian. Whatever it is, Mizuki is able to both celebrate and poke fun at Japan and its backward practices, and even her own idiosyncrasies. Never is this more clear than when she becomes obsessed with Kiyoshi, a restaurateur.

When we meet Mizuki, she has started to feel “the urge to run around like a dog chasing its tail, asking [herself] stupid questions and trying to shake them out of [her] head.” This restless state of mind, along with a sense of feeling underappreciated by Tatsuya, leads her to the balcony, where she throws herself to the ground. Well, not throw herself. That would be too dramatic. But maybe jump? At any rate, she quickly shakes off the idea as foolish. After all, she is not abused or even hated by her husband, though he occasionally takes her for granted and could stand to phrase things more pleasantly. Mizuki’s brief fling with death (or at least the idea of it) is, for her, a reminder to think more rationally and not like “an insane dog.” But for the reader, it’s a portent of something sinister hiding in the cracks of her marriage.

Perhaps Mizuki could have lived like this indefinitely, ignoring the annoying, irritating and even harmful aspects of housewife life in favor of its stability and comfort. After all, she and Tatsuya have been married for over a decade. Who really needs sex at their age anyway? But then, on a rain-splattered night, she meets Kiyoshi. For the second time. Well-built and broad-shouldered, with strong features, Kiyoshi probably could make any woman look twice. But when Mizuki runs into him again and again and again, she finds that she can’t stop thinking about him.

Far from a story about a woman caught in the lust of an affair, FAULT LINES is not about (or at least, not only about) the love affair of Mizuki and Kiyoshi, but rather about Mizuki’s love affair with herself, one that allows her to rediscover her own spark and reprioritize what she wants from life. Sure, Kiyoshi’s attention is flirtatious and sensual, but more than that, it marks the first time that anyone close to her has really paid attention, really asked her a question about herself and waited for the answer, really listened. Soon, the facade of Mizuki’s wit (and my goodness is she witty!) starts to fall away, and she begins to see how lonely she truly was before she met Kiyoshi.

Bowled over by the intoxicating combination of sexual attraction and attention, Mizuki soon finds, inevitably, that she has fallen for Kiyoshi, not just the freedom he represents or the electricity of their affair and Tokyo’s nightlife. Itami doesn’t hold back in her depiction of Mizuki, never hiding her flaws or making poor excuses for them. At the same time, though, she provides readers with a no-holds-barred view into Mizuki’s mind and all of her ponderings, complaints and exaltations on life, her marriage and her role as a mother. Combined, these full, vivid portrayals of a “real” woman are astonishing. Like Mizuki, we know that what she is doing is technically wrong, yet we root for her implicitly.

What initially seems like a negative view of marriage, commitment and fidelity becomes so much more in Itami’s skilled hands and piercing gaze. FAULT LINES is full of laugh-out-loud, irreverent humor, as well as heartstoppingly poignant, yet seemingly incidental, wisdom. All of the inner yearnings and tribulations of Mizuki are laid bare, offering one of the fullest, most thorough depictions of a character I have ever read. Although the book is undeniably funny, it reads as if Itami has wrung out every possible meaning, perception and argument from every last word. Every line here is razor-sharp, chosen with precision, resulting in a deceptively clever, emotionally wise and truly heartbreaking novel.

Perfect for readers of character-driven books like NORMAL PEOPLE and MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION, and underappreciated spouses who loved THE HUSBANDS and KIM JI-YOUNG, BORN 1982, this engaging novel is the perfect book to pull you out of any slump and act a little kinder to yourself the next time you ask, “Who am I, and how did I get here?”

"Fault Lines" is a unique take on facing and challenging the status quo, especially as it applies to women in today's society.

Mizuki has the picture-perfect life: she's a housewife in Japan married to a successful husband, has two young children, and lives in a beautiful apartment. She shouldn't want for anything else, but when she Kiyoshi, a restauranteur, she begins to question her life and what she truly wants from it. Mizuki's situation is one that many will empathize with, especially given the constraints of how conservative Japanese society is and its expectations for women. Itami also addresses the importance of being taken care not only physically. but emotionally as well, and I genuinely enjoyed seeing MIzuki rediscover her own feelings and needs as she spent time with Kiyoshi.

Itami's writing is well-structured and descriptive, and she manages to highlight a number of important topics across relationships, marriage, parenthood, and the difficulties of being a woman in a today's day and age.

Motherhood is often described as the greatest sacrifice. In what other "profession" do you give so much of yourself to others? Throw in being a wife to boot, and it's enough to drive any woman mad. Just kidding, of course, we know you love your family, but have you ever dreamed about what your life might have been had you not married and had kids? Enter Emily Itami with her candid and affirming debut novel, Fault Lines, which tells the tale of an under-stimulated Tokyo housewife who catches a glimpse of her former self through a relationship with a local restauranteur.

Don't get Mizuki wrong - she loves her kids. Her husband? Well, that's up for debate. He seems to love his job more than he loves her these days. But she DOES love her kids ... it is just sometimes they drive her a bit up the wall. Stuck in a high-rise Tokyo apartment day in and day out, Mizuki dreams of a different life. When she makes the acquaintance of a successful restauranteur, Kiyoshi, he reminds her of the girl she once was before motherhood and marriage took over her life. Is the magic she experiences with Kiyoshi enough to make her leave her family behind though? And would she really want to?

Although the friendship turned romantic relationship in Fault Lines is often mentioned as a focal point of the novel, this is actually more of a story of the inner musings of a mother and wife. Mizuki is hilariously refreshing, and although I am not a wife and mother myself, I found her portrayal of the "job" to be frank, honest, and highly relatable. Itami has a beautiful way of writing the mind and I so enjoyed reading all of the varied ways she described Mizuki's innermost thoughts and feelings. Mizuki and Kiyoshi's relationship wasn't the most interesting or compelling part of this novel to me - Mizuki herself is what had me hooked.

I listened to an audiobook production of Fault Lines narrated by Lydia Wilson. I thought that she was a surprising choice as Fault Lines is written by a Tokyo native about a character living in Tokyo. However, when considering that Emily Itami now lives in London, and this book was likely written for an English audience, it makes sense. I found Wilson's voice to be incredibly soothing and intimate, which worked well for this book. It fit my image of Mizuki being a soft-spoken housewife who is sharing her eyebrow-raising secrets quietly with the rest of the world.

You will enjoy Fault Lines if you are looking for a book about flawed characters who dream of something more, especially if you enjoy reading books about motherhood and marriage. Those who love literary fiction or novels that feel just a little bit different, while still being fairly mainstream will also like this story.