Title: A Thunderstruck Woman
Subtitle: A Story of Swapped Bodies and Second Chances
Series: Japanesque TS
Author: Yulia Yu. Sakurazawa
Welcome to the strange world that is A Thunderstruck Woman: A Story of Swapped Bodies and Second Chances. It’s a story about a bolt from the blue, a thunderclap that throws two ordinary lives into chaos, a chaos that ultimately results in a form of beautiful, but perhaps terrifying, transformation.
My name is Yulia Yu Sakurazawa, and I write about characters who don’t fit into the ordinary boxes of life. In this story, a fifty-five-year-old salaryman, Morimura, and a twenty-year-old office lady, Kinoshita Miku, find themselves swapped, body and soul, by a lightning strike. It’s not just their bodies that have changed, but everything they thought they knew about themselves.
Morimura, a man who was used to the quiet life, is thrown into the chaotic world of a twenty-year old woman. He is faced with the daily trials of navigating a young woman’s friendships, love life, and workplace politics. He is a man, in a woman’s body, but he finds that old memories, and long buried desires are starting to reappear, as he struggles to adjust to his new identity.
On the other side, Miku must learn to navigate the complexities of a middle-aged man’s life. She is lost in the confusing world of mortgages and pension plans, with no idea where her life has gone. She must face her past, and find a way back to herself.
This isn’t a story about a simple body swap. It’s a story about what it means to be a self. It’s about gender identity, it’s about love, it’s about betrayal, and above all, it’s about finding yourself, when your whole world has been turned upside down. As Morimura and Miku struggle to reclaim what they’ve lost, they begin to discover something new, something within themselves that they never knew existed. They explore the fluid boundaries of identity, the complicated nature of love, and what it truly means to be yourself, in a world that doesn’t know what box to put you in.
While A Thunderstruck Woman has a magical, almost fantastical premise, it’s rooted in very real human emotions, and the daily problems that many of us face. It’s a love story, in a strange way, a love story about the self, and a love story about the relationships that define us.
It’s also an exploration of the LGBTQ+ experience. It asks what happens when a person becomes, in a very real sense, both male and female. What does it feel like, and what does it mean? It explores the fluidity of gender and sexuality, and the complex, messy ways that we fall in love.
The characters in this book are more than just men and women. They are people, wrestling with their own inner truths, as they explore this strange new world. I hope that you’ll join them on their journey, and that, along the way, you might learn a little more about yourself, too.