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What Members Thought
The story of a love affair between a Chinese American boy and a Japanese American girl that jumps back and forth between 1942 and 1986.
50 year old Henry happens to be walking past the Panama Hotel one day as the forgotten belongings of Japanese families sent to internment camps during WWII are discovered during a remodeling project. He sees a parasol that reminds him of his first love, Kioko.
50 year old Henry happens to be walking past the Panama Hotel one day as the forgotten belongings of Japanese families sent to internment camps during WWII are discovered during a remodeling project. He sees a parasol that reminds him of his first love, Kioko.
A little too slow & sweet for my tastes
I read this for book club, & though the story was an interesting concept, I found the characters too flat & one-dimensional, Also, it was about 50 pages too long - a good editor could have done a lot for this book.
I read this for book club, & though the story was an interesting concept, I found the characters too flat & one-dimensional, Also, it was about 50 pages too long - a good editor could have done a lot for this book.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.....the history, the love story, the tragedy, etc. It read very easily, drew me right in and kept me coming back for more. "Sometimes you have to just go for it. Try for what's hardest to accomplish."
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2 1/2 stars. While I think the author did a great job of portraying the multifaceted and complicated racism and prejudice of the times, overall the book missed the mark. It was way too sappy, and the romance between 12 year olds was not believable. Had they been just 3 years older, it could have had an intensity that was realistic, but this was ridiculous.
The good thing about this book, set in Seattle as the Japanese interment camps open, was its epic plot, about Chinese boy in love with a Japanese girl, and how their lives progressed. The history was interesting, and based on careful research, from what I could tell. However, the writing was unoriginal and the story came together too neatly.
This book was interesting enough, but for some reason I didn't get drawn into the story. I wasn't dying to pick it up and read it and if I didn't have to read it for a class I probably wouldn't have finished it. I liked the history in the book and I did care what happened to the characters, but it was predictable.
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I loved this book. It is a timely reminder of what can happen when we demonize an entire group within our population. It's also just a lovely story about family, friendship, and loyalty. I hope that George Takei can get it made into a movie.
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Jan 12, 2011
Teri G
marked it as to-read
Nov 01, 2011
Stormnangel
marked it as to-read
Feb 07, 2012
Melissa & Andrew Richner
marked it as to-read
May 03, 2013
Vicki
marked it as to-read
Dec 20, 2015
Kendra
marked it as to-read
Dec 20, 2016
Julie C.
marked it as to-read
Sep 07, 2017
Adrienne
marked it as to-read
Dec 03, 2018
Karen Pirrung
marked it as to-read
Feb 26, 2019
Melissa Wiebe
marked it as to-read
Jul 09, 2019
Tricia Parrott
marked it as to-read
Jan 08, 2020
Angie
marked it as to-read
Dec 02, 2020
Karen
marked it as to-read
Dec 07, 2020
Deborah
rated it
it was amazing
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review of another edition
Shelves:
blue-and-yellow-book-club
Dec 17, 2020
Heather
marked it as to-read
