Tokyo Dare by Anne Van is an adventure, at least from an American’s perspective in Tokyo. Erin is on a scholarship to an academy in Tokyo. She won the scholarship against her best friend, Tori. Tori writes her a letter with a list of to-dos and tells Erin she’ll do nasty things to Erin’s beloved art project if she doesn’t complete the list. So begins Erin’s year in Japan.

This book was a great escape. I really enjoyed getting to experience every piece of Erin’s adventure, from boys to vending machine food to the temples to her host family to love hotels. It was a book I couldn’t put down because I was having too much fun.

The romance was a bit naive and silly at times. I did enjoy that the obvious love interest was not the actual love interest. There were a lot of places this book could have gone, and it took turns I wasn’t quite expecting. The characters were all believable and loveable or cringe-worthy.

Though the relationship between Erin and her parents was strange. I couldn’t tell if she thought they were good parents or not. It seemed they were just absent from her life, which is much too typical of a YA novel. Also, Erin acted like an only child a lot of the time, but had three siblings. Basically, her home life was not developed very well, and part of that may be because we never saw her at home. Though, as a well-rounded character, we should have gotten a better idea from who she is. I interpreted her as an only child with absent parents and an affinity for drama. When in reality she had three siblings and parents who at times seemed to care quite a lot.

I would highly recommend this book as a quick weekend getaway.

I also reviewed Anne Van’s short story.

I received this book from the author for review.