Light reading week! Last weekend's activities included an out-of-state baby shower, which cramped my reading time, and during the week there was a flurry of actual cooking activity that was not just Stouffer's frozen mac and cheese and Perdue chicken strips. My stomach is happy. My brain is a little sad.
Star Sand by Roger Pulvers. This book follows a week in the life of sixteen year-old Umeno Hiromi, an inhabitant of a remote Okinawan island. Hatomi, for the most part, is relatively untouched by the ravages of the second World War; that is, until on one of her dives to retrieve the island's star sand for her collection, she discovers a hidden cave housing two deserters: one American, one Japanese. Her diary documents the events of those six fateful days until it comes to an abrupt end. Decades later, when researchers discover the cave in the present day, they find the diary and three skeletons, and unravel the mystery of what happened in that week with the help of an unexpected survivor.
I loved this book, which I chose as my
Kindle First pick for this month. Pulvers tells a compelling story with the matter-of-fact, clean prose characteristic of most Japanese written works - language that is simple and beautiful, but doesn't meander unnecessarily. The three central characters are the heart of the story, and each given a sense of great humanity and grace despite the nature of their experiences. This leads to an ending that is about what you'd expect: sad in the way the things you can't change are sad, but also beautiful and a little hopeful.
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Confess by Colleen Hoover. Auburn Reed is struggling to rebuild and get her life back on track in a new city after her first love dies. When she meets Owen Gentry, a mysterious, charming artist with a tragic past, everything changes. Owen has a secret of his own that could destroy Auburn's future.
This is the kind of book that 16-20 year-old me would have loved. As an adult, it seems more like a really drawn out, super flowery, soap opera fanfiction. While there was an obviously unhealthy relationship tucked into the story, I can't say I was too won over by how under-the-radar creepy/clingy Auburn and Owen's relationship seemed. I mean. I get it. It's a romance, and one that seems to be geared towards young adults, but I think I've spent too much time on
/r/relationships to really buy it as a healthy, adult relationship. Or maybe I'm not as into romance novels as I used to be. While I did find these things problematic, I generally enjoyed the story and found myself reading to the end. If you keep your expectations low and suspend your disbelief a little bit,
Confess is a decent light/beach read.
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The Light of Fireflies by Paul Pen. A ten year-old boy has lived his whole life in the basement with his family: his father, mother, grandmother, brother, and sister, occasionally dreaming about the world outside. The boy had known no other life, but his family had lived above, before a terrible fire scarred them all - his sister, especially, who wears a mask to conceal her disfigured face - and sent them underground Then, his sister gives birth to a baby. His father becomes even more tightly wound. Tensions run high and suddenly, the safe world of his basement seems to small and dark. Then, he finds he has a chance to escape...
I don't know where to begin with this, other than: it starts out very good, but the ending is so...bland. There's a lot of that insidious, somewhat realistic horror that makes it a really compelling page-turner; Pen does a great job building suspense. But as I read about the events that unfolded that forced the family to go underground, I felt a lot of frustration and had many a wtf moment. The turnaround event itself, the stark difference in the treatment of the boy's brother and sister by their parents, they way the adults decided to handle the tragedy thereafter...I found myself thinking almost aloud, y'all crazy. These things ultimately made the reveal and ending unsatisfying to read.
