Samurai Girl: The Book of the Heart by Carrie Asai

() So I had this book for a really long while, and tried to renew it the second time because I was dreading reading it. Turned out someone had it requested! So I was forced to read it if I was ever going to. I guess it's popular now that ABC is making a TV show out of it.
It's entertaining - full of non-stop suspense. It's like an exotic "24" (the TV show) for younger generations. I don't know what number this book is in the line.
There's tons of background that they continually fill you in on throughout the story, like most series books, but it starts out with the main character, Heaven, moving to Japan. It soon seems the place she is staying in is untrustworthy and dangerous - with much struggle, she escapes; of course her dreaded, also untrustworthy ex-boyfriend helps. Later, it turns out he was actually plotting against her the whole time too. She doesn't know where to turn, and tries to find her birth mother. (She was adopted of course!) She finds her and they fend off a big army of ninjas together and ride off with another guy from Heaven's past, Teddy. Why is everyone against her? Her father has ties to the Japanese mob and Heaven's famous for some reason not made clear in this book. Etc... It's crazy, a lot too crazy for me. But it's not boring.