It Wasn't Love

Millie has decided it’s time to take control over the situation regarding her virginity, or lack thereof. Determined to regain some semblance of balance after a year of post-rape trauma, she finds a kindred spirit—Luke—who is dealing with a loss of his own. Off the hook from living up to impossible expectations, she chooses to reinvent herself through her sexuality and a series of relationship failures.

Millie is also the sole Asian adoptee in a large and bustling white family whose struggles are plenty. Severe anorexia and family embezzlement allow her own less tangible issues to be easily overlooked. Emptied of the life she thought she was meant to lead, dive with her through the fractures between innocence and immorality.

‘It Wasn’t Love’ exposes a controversial self-empowerment in a society of floundering youth. It reveals the shame often coveted too closely and the truths that just can’t be changed. Through the voice of a girl on the verge of her will, experience the awkwardness of trying to cope with suicide and self-preservation. Serve as witness to the tumultuous path she must take to seek inner peace and, at last, love.

Memoir | Released October 2014 | Buy on Bookshop.org > | Buy on Amazon >

Told in a relatable, honest voice that doesn’t shy away from life’s worst realities, JS Lee’s IT WASN’T LOVE is a book about trauma and resilience and independence and life.
—Matthew Salesses, author of Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, The Hundred-Year Flood, and more

In IT WASN’T LOVE, we ride Korean-American adoptee and brutal rape survivor Millie Vaniti’s interior life through late adolescence and early adulthood as she pilots a coming-of-age shaken by shame and a longing to be fully accepted and loved. Millie is remarkably relatable, and author JS Lee manages to tackle subject matter that could easily be overwrought or hackneyed quite poignantly by giving it to us straight. No romanticizing. No aplomb. Just one of the most honest portrayals of young sexuality and identity that you’re likely to find. This is more than non-fiction. This is true.
—Jade Sylvan, author of Kissing Oscar Wilde, Ten, and more

Author’s Note: This book was written in 2013 while I was still on my journey towards self-actualizing as an Asian and queer woman. I fight to resist an edit that corrects some regrets—such as the use of the word “thug”, not capitalizing Black when referring to race, an ableist sentence, and non-inclusive gender language. Instead, I leave things as they are, aware of my growth and that erasing my prior mistakes can be worse than owning up to them. Apologies for any offenses my word choices may have caused.

READER REVIEWS

JS Lee Deserves Your Reading
I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading It Wasn’t Love. What I quickly realized is that Jessica’s relatable prose, heartfelt sentiments and Millie’s profound, honest frankness as she navigates the minefield of post-rape, trans-racial adoption and her teenage years is something that will stick with me for a lifetime. It’s a tough book, but not because of Jessica’s lack of story-telling skill. To the contrary, her wordsmithing is sublime. Jessica’s skill brings home the subject matter that much more powerfully. It Wasn’t Love is the kind of book, and Millie is the kind of character, that you will find yourself thinking about days and weeks after having finished reading. —Gregory Barbee

The meaning of life is human connection - the lack of it, the desire for it, the actuality of it
Have you ever picked up a book and weren’t able to put it down until you flipped through the last page? Well, around five hours later, I did just that. I was mesmerized by the main character, probably because I could relate to her emotions and inner thoughts about adolescence, sexuality, and the repercussions of trauma. This is the type of novel where you realize again and again that the meaning of life is human connection – the lack of it, the desire for it, the actuality of it. As a 41 year-old fellow Korean adoptee woman, I felt myself relive moments in my youth where one minute I felt invincible and other moments where I felt invisible, vulnerable, and insignificant, specifically as an adoptee and collectively as a typical teenager. It really felt like I was reading someone’s diary – – you know it’s not right to do but at the same time, you are trying to figure out the person and realize how ultimately we are so capable of relating to another person and the way the mind processes life experiences and the emotions attached to them. —Amazon Customer

I admire her bravery, and a brilliant look into rape, adoption, a lost sense of self, and identity
Raw emotions such as anger, fear, jealousy, worry, can leave you feeling overwhelmed. Jessica Sun Lee brings that together in an honest, sincere book. I admire her bravery and a brilliant look into rape, abandonment, adoption, a lost sense of self, and identity. I was profoundly touched by her experiences, which are very relatable to my own life experiences. There’s no way to achieve character evolution without turning the mirror on not only your characters but also on yourself as the writer. If you do not know the person who is looking in the mirror, how are you going to know yourself when you see yourself? Who are you? We ask the mirror, ourselves in the mirror. Those who are wise beyond their years are a bit of an enigma. They are young, but have an old soul. JS Lee is one of those people…The part which remains a mystery is there to keep us searching, for the aim is not to find, but to keep seeking. Many people fear facing their real pain, because it may unravel them. For anyone with deep pain, this book may inspire them..I look forward to the other two books that she is releasing this year as I await their release. —Chun Sae Min

Intense and heartbreaking
What an intense and heartbreaking story, all the more so because it is a true one. Through her character, Millie, Lee tackles many of the same issues all women deal with: identity, social and familial expectations, our sexuality. But she tells it from a perspective that is compounded by her status as a Korean adoptee in a very white New England world. It made me stop and think about how much I was able to take for granted growing up and how those things provided me with a level of security Millie never had. This is a poignant, thought-provoking book. —Krys

Must Read
Lee’s It Wasn’t Love has stayed with me long after I finished turning the pages. I find myself thinking of the story and the main character as I go about my day. The narrative pulls you in with honest, universal truths that reach out from the pages to connect with readers from all walks. This is the magic of Lee’s writing. It Wasn’t Love is a book I see myself re-reading in the future. Lee’s debut work highlights the art of master storytelling. Highly recommended. —racie

This is my 90210 from a tilted angle
I can absolutely relate to this book. This my 90210, this is my Dawson’s Creek, that i was never able to relate to growing up because I saw the world from a tilted angle. I’m also an asian girl and i was raised with alot of violence surrounding me having left a country in chaos with a military family, only to return much older to see my uncle murdered resulting in my PTSD. JS Lee gets it, whatever it is that i feel. She sees the world from a tilted angle. Breaking the glass ceiling of the American Dream and reimagining it, re-ording in perhaps non-traditional way to some but what part of shattered glass has no rough edges? She screams out, she rebels. She takes you to where the aching feeling is and forces you to look at it and yourself. Plus she’s the hot asian barbie rocker that i wish i had to look up to growing up! But it’s never too late! There is surprising resilience and humor in this book that shows true strength in character. Read It Wasn’t Love no matter who you are, it’s Important. —mgeo

Raw, brutally honest and compelling
Because JS Lee has written her personal story with such detail and emotion, it is believable to anyone who has experienced any type of sexual trauma. What makes it unique is how she connects her journey to not only “The Incident” but also her abandonment, adoption, and being a Korean adoptee raised in a white family. JS Lee doesn’t hold back and gives the readers her brutally honest recounting of her life events, which has helped me during my own healing process. —Suzanne Johnson

The rest of the times I was laughing out loud
I was very profoundly touched and brought to tears at times by this book,and by JS’s experiences. The rest of the times I was laughing out loud at her wonderful sense of humor and her own ability to laugh at herself and at absurd as well as painful life events. I normally read fiction, but this is one non-fiction book that grabbed me on the first page, and I couldn’t put it down till the end, at which point I felt like I was saying goodbye to a very dear friend. —Patricia Austin

Emotional read but so worth it
JS Lee does an amazing job weaving emotion, context, and complexity of being adopted, surviving rape and ultimately healing. It’s a page turner that won’t disappoint. What I really liked about the book is that she is real in the pages. She makes mistakes, she takes risks, she’s vulnerable, she’s stubborn, and she grows emotionally, and we as the reader are there with her through the struggles and the successes. Highly recommend folks read this. —tanyaK

A Powerful Book About Reclaiming Life Post-Trauma
It Wasn’t Love is a powerful book about the stages one goes through in reaction to trauma, the ways that past traumas can continue to affect us throughout life, and learning to reclaim one’s existence despite trauma.

Although it’s not clear from the beginning, the epilogue explains that It Wasn’t Love is something of an autobiographical novel, with only names, certain details, and chronologies changed. It begins with Mille as a teenager, exploring her own sexuality in the wake of a violent rape. Even for those of us who never suffered a sexual assault, I think the first part of the book, with Millie slowly learning to enjoy sex with Luke, is very relatable. Personally, I’m almost jealous of her experience with him. She could not have asked for a gentler, more caring, and more open young man with whom to learn about sex in a non-threatening way.

Soon after, she has something of a summer of hook-ups. It seems to me like a very believable and realistic portrayal of a young woman trying to find some peace through a reclaiming of her sexuality. So many interesting things happen during this time, including a great section about a slightly older man who acts just a bit inappropriately, which causes her peers to more-or-less drive him out of town. Millie, on the other hand, sympathizes with him, recognizing that his behavior “wasn’t violent. It was just inappropriate and awkward.” She’s coming from a place of understanding just how much darker and more dangerous the behavior of men can be. There is also a part in this section where she quickly initiates and has sex with a young man who comes instantly then tells her he was a virgin. She then struggles somewhat with the question of whether she should feel she did something unethical to him, and I was really relieved she did ask herself those questions because I would have been disappointed if she hadn’t.

In fact, many times throughout the book there are points when I’d ask myself something, worried that the author might not address it, but then she does, in fact, address it. As soon as I found myself thinking that Millie blacks out an awful lot, Millie starts to wonder if she is blacking out for reasons other than being drunk or roofied. The book never let me down.

Equally as important in this book is the fact that Millie was adopted from Korea by a white family. Over the years, I have read many books about adoption from the point of view of birth mothers, adult adopted children, and adoptive families. I started reading these books because of a paper I was writing in a college women’s studies class, when it occurred to me that adoption is an issue that touches upon three of the main topics in social justice: race, class, and gender. All throughout it, I thought to myself that Millie acted like a person who feared abandonment, and it likely had a lot to do with her very early childhood. The book addressed this thoroughly, I’m glad to say.

Millie seems like a really cool person. I want to hear her music and read her books. I like that she’s vegetarian and that both love of non-human animals and love of music are therapeutic for her. I look forward to reading the future works of JS Lee! —Melissa

I highly recommend you read this honest
I highly recommend you read this honest, heartbreaking, and empowering story. I found myself captivated from page one, until the very end as the author lead me through her journey from adolescence into adulthood. You will gain deep insight and a true understanding of how the trauma of rape can affect a victim for life. I thank JS Lee for her bravery and for sharing this story. Her strength and resilience shine through as she is able to overcome, find happiness and her true self. I know this book will inspire and help many people who can relate to her words. A must read!! —Anne L.

oh so bravely told...
Lovely, painful, heartbreaking, frustrating, poignant, and triumphant. Unlike for some, it was a slower read for me but that was largely due to it being much like my own story in so many ways. And if it’s like my own, then how many other women can say the same? And while the content is largely “adult”, I would think that females in their teens and up could see themselves in Millie, much like those of us who grew up with Judy Blume books could see ourselves in her coming of age female protagonists. Thank you, JS Lee, for being a voice for sexual violence and the destruction it causes and for making yourself vulnerable through your words. —K. Lustig

Awe-inspiring, heartbreaking, courageous, honestly blunt
A well written book that makes you see things from a survivor’s perspective. Millie may not have made the best decisions but they were decisions based on her “incident” that makes one understand and sympathize with her. You can see the trauma is real and the effects are life changing. This book will grab your attention from beginning to end. Once you pick it up, you will not want to put it down to see Millie finally come full circle. —J. Moerke

Captivating, Sincere, Brave
This narrative captivated my attention from cover to cover. The events chronicled from adolescence to adulthood were written in a forthright fashion that enabled the reader to feel transplanted directly into the storyline, witnessing details first-hand– both all too relatable and unfathomable. The courage to retell this biographical account is an inspiration to all. I felt that each experience was a challenging strand woven into the fabric of the author’s identity. —Stephanie R Davis

A fascinating window
This book reads like good young adult fiction. At its heart, the author taps into the essence of the adolescent years…the anger, insight, and fragility. Except what happens in Millie’s adolescence affects her throughout her early adult life and beyond. It’s a fascinating window into how “The Incident” affects all her relationships. J S Lee writes with compassion for everyone, including herself, with the lightest touch of irreverence and humor, which moves the story along with strength and grace. Although I wanted to yell at Millie, “What are you doing!?” sometimes, it’s important to read without judgment. Because if her experience is similar to the countless others who have been changed by sexual violence then we all still have a long way to go. —junebug