Janeen Weiss

awful writing. confusing disjointed. I am trying to finish and after 130 pages I still don’t kniw the point of this. Beginning premise was interesting but downhill all the way. Cannot recommend this to anyone

Listening to this book is sometimes like trying to swim through butter…sticky and no way out. The reader is arrogant and annoying, the through line is confusing and the names are even more confusing. Am close to the end but still have no idea how murders took place or if this story is just about the writer’s growth and no idea about the murders. Maybe better if read. Cannot recommend the audio version at all.

Too many characters to even keep track of. Too long to get into the meat of this story. Truly disappointing to me. Definitely not a writer I would joy go out of my way to read again. Overall rather dull. She was compared to Louise Penny … not a chance.

I listened to Tom Hanks read this book which was rather nice. I got involved with it early on but after many chapters it became rather repetitive and the characters’ growth was slow and sometimes annoying. And the relationship between the brother and sister got a bit too much. It was a decent read (or listen) but it is not high on my recommendations list. The writing is good but it left me feeling very blah or more like ‘so what’. You want to yell Grow Up at these adults. Just seemed a bit hollow. If you like her writing and family attachments and holding on to old grudges, this is the book for you.

Somewhat interesting and as a former Chicagoan, it was a bit of a trip down memory lane. However, I had a hard time finding the main character likable and she was quite arrogant and at times annoying. I also found the brief discussions and descriptions of Manzanar minimized. And, the book could have moved to the more serious occurrence of Hiroshima and its effects on the Nisei community in Chicago. But it stopped short of those bombings. I felt it minimized so much and the characters, in my opinion, could have been more well developed and given more depth. It was an okay read but not on my recommended list.