Valerie
I ended up liking this book a lot more than I expected to at the beginning. It's pretty rough and traumatic, mind you, but for the most part, it's well written with complicated characters and a very mature understanding of grief and motherhood.
That said, I think it suffers from two aspects of being a self-published book that might have gotten caught be a professional publisher. One is it's really long, and some parts do drag a bit. The other is the mixing of English/Japanese/made up language. The Japanglish made me feel like I was reading fanfiction, and it just didn't make sense given that other words (like the units of time) are completely made up. It feels a bit like fantasizing an actual culture, which was grating. I don't know much about the author's background, but the author blurb says she's from Wisconsin, so that gives me a bit of pause. And the made up words were really annoying when the work is supposed to be translated anyway.
That sounds rather negative, and all in all, I really did find myself coming back to this story to see what happened next. It's brutal though, and particularly hard to read in light of the horrific events in Gaza, so really check the content warnings before you start if that is something you need.
I ended up liking this book a lot more than I expected to at the beginning. It's pretty rough and traumatic, mind you, but for the most part, it's well written with complicated characters and a very mature understanding of grief and motherhood.
That said, I think it suffers from two aspects of being a self-published book that might have gotten caught be a professional publisher. One is it's really long, and some parts do drag a bit. The other is the mixing of English/Japanese/made up language. The Japanglish made me feel like I was reading fanfiction, and it just didn't make sense given that other words (like the units of time) are completely made up. It feels a bit like fantasizing an actual culture, which was grating. I don't know much about the author's background, but the author blurb says she's from Wisconsin, so that gives me a bit of pause. And the made up words were really annoying when the work is supposed to be translated anyway.
That sounds rather negative, and all in all, I really did find myself coming back to this story to see what happened next. It's brutal though, and particularly hard to read in light of the horrific events in Gaza, so really check the content warnings before you start if that is something you need.