His new wife wants to be Yuki's friend, but essentially, Yuki misses her mother and the loving relationship they had, and she is very unhappy. Her mother is portrayed as loving but weak and fragile, while her father and stepmother worry more about what other people will think than they do about Yuki. They also do not let her visit her mother's family as often as she would like, and that bothers her. Essentially, she grows up without love after her mother dies, and she has to come to terms not only with losing her mother but also with her own maturity and dreams for the future.
Two of these protagonists are immigrants, and they are all caught between two different worlds. How they react and how they manage to combine their cultures is the central point of all these books. Their families all hang on to their home culture, while the protagonists all want to fit in to American culture. Each of them feels very responsible to their family, and very responsible to the people...
Yuki has a very different problem, she was extremely close to her mother, but her mother commits suicide. Yuki grows up in a strict family, like all of these protagonists, but her family life is also strained, and without love. In the other books, the families love the children in their own way, but Yuki faces different problems, and her memories of her mother are really her only comfort throughout much of her growing up. Each of these books essentially portrays a dysfunctional or broken family, and each protagonist has to deal with this as they mature into adults. Hopefully, each will learn a valuable lesson from their families, and they will be more loving, accepting, and caring as a result. Each of these protagonists is smart, and so, it seems they will learn positive lessons from their families, even though it may be difficult for them. They are all strong, determined, and eager for the future, in spite of their difficulties with their families.
