Sushi for One?

By Camy Tang

Description:

Lex Sakai’s family is big, nosy, and marriage-minded. When her cousin Mariko gets married, Lex will become the oldest single cousin in the clan.

Lex has used her Bible study class on Ephesians to compile a huge list of traits for the perfect man. But the one man she keeps running into doesn’t seem to have a single quality on her list. It’s only when the always-in-control Lex starts to let God take over that all the pieces of this hilarious romance finally fall into place.

Book Takeaway:

The one issue my heroine deals with is realizing that she can’t do it all for herself. As a Christian, I struggle with this a lot—I want to fix my own problems, and often I’ll forget to ask God what HE thinks about it. And there are times when nothing else matters but God’s love for us, and that we just need to be quiet and be held by God’s grace and love. I hope my readers get that sense when they finish the book.

Awards:

Why the author wrote this book:

Why I wrote my novel, Sushi for One: I have to admit, God had to wrench it out of me.

I’d blithely written four other novels before Sushi for One, and they’d poured out of my brain onto the computer screen almost like magic. I expected manuscript number five to be like that, too.

I knew the cast of characters, the Sakai family cousins. I knew the plot—diabolical Grandma, junior high girls’ volleyball team, mandatory date to the next family wedding. I knew the spiritual conflict of my heroine, Lex, who had used her Ephesians Bible study to come up with a crazy list of qualifications for The Perfect Man.

But God had other plans.

He didn’t ask me to change what the book was supposed to be about. But He did ask me to dig deeper—to dig further into my own personal struggles—in order to infuse some of that into Lex’s spiritual arc.

I don’t know about you, but digging into my personal struggles isn’t exactly my idea of a day at Disneyland. I don’t like digging. It’s not like picking at your pimples or scratching at a scab—it’s like grabbing a scalpel and slashing away. (Oops, was that too graphic? Sorry)

But you know God … He just keeps nudging us until we finally say, “All right, fine!” And then He laughs because we’re so annoyed, but we also know He’s right.

I put some of my own personal struggles into Lex’s character—the determination to charge forward full steam instead of waiting to see what God would want, the determination to get my own way, the determination … well, just determination. Yes, I’m a pretty bull-headed person sometimes.

I gave Lex some of my own personal fears, which made it a slightly darker book, but I hope it also adds more complexity to her character.

When I finally typed The End, I felt like I’d run a marathon. In high heels. But I also knew it was a better book because God had wanted me to dig deeper.

I hope you enjoy it, too!