A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

It took me over half the book to work out why this wasn't quite working for me. This is exactly the kind of genre I love: a historical family drama spanning the years and exploring the various difficulties and secrets between relations. My biggest complaint was the author's decision to make our narrator, Amaterasu, omniscient, all-knowing and able to describe exactly how other people felt, exactly what they saw and what they were thinking, simply through reading a few letters and diary entries. If Copleton wanted to write about all the characters' thoughts, then she simply shouldn't have written this in first person, in my opinion. It makes Amaterasu's account seem disingenuous or dishonest, and I think this is the main reason I failed to connect with her family's story as much as I'd hoped.

In addition to that, I didn't find most of the plot believable and some of it was overly melodramatic. I'm also slightly confused over Sato's character, as personally I think he is despicable without any redeeming qualities, but I get the sense we are meant to feel some sort of sympathy for me.

Despite not loving this one, I would like to thank the publisher for sending me the review copy, especially as it is one of best formatted review copies I've ever received (not that I've received that many but still). Usually ebook review copies look fairly unfinished, but that wasn't the case here and it looked very professional.