Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

I wanted to like this book so much. The story is personal to me, both as the grandchild of Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during WWII as well as a person from Seattle. I love the tea room at the Panama Hotel and exploring Seattle's International District. Unfortunately, while the premise for this book is great and the history important, I just didn't find the writing to be very good. The descriptions were stilted, and the character interactions weren't believable. This is a story worth telling; I just wish it had been told better.

A Fantastic Story of Love and Connection

I read this novel for a “community reads” with the high school at which I teach. It's a rich, multi-layered story of young love torn by prejudice and the horrible internment of Japanese Americans. It's also about the distance between fathers and sons and how understanding and acceptance can overcome this. A few elements of the plot were more fantastic than realistic and these only contributed to the fairy tale aspect of the story. With the start of the school year next week, I look forward to the discussions out students, faculty and staff will soon have about this memorable novel.

what a sweet story!

with all that's been happening in ~2020~, it often seems like things couldn't get any worse. but... at least whole populations of the country aren't being shipped away to internment camps? not yet, anyway, despite the current administration's best efforts. i know, the bar is pretty low. it's so hard for me to believe that this was a thing that happened to americans not that long ago.

I really, really enjoyed this one! I sat down yesterday to read a little and basically read it from cover to cover in one afternoon. The story is just so beautifully written and the characters and their relationships are poignant and heartfelt. I didn't know a lot about what went on in the US during WWII, so I found that part to be especially interesting and sad. There are a few rather large mistakes throughout the book, one of the biggest being the fact that there were no Internet therapy groups in 1986, heck I am not even sure most people had a computer in their home in 1986, much less the Internet, another one was that Brandon Lee didn't die until 1993, making it impossible for him to be buried with his father and near Henry's wife in 1986, if these types of mistakes annoy you, then you may find yourself not enjoying this one, but truth be told the mistakes didn't distract me from what was an otherwise fabulous debut novel from this author!