I listened to this one, narrated by  Justine Eyre. It was about 12 hours long, but it passed by quickly with this fun read. It's not particularly deep or magical and it doesn't call life as we know it into question.

It's a nice read/listen, light and intriguing for anyone in the mood for a little escape from the disappointments that have been abounding.

Funny enough, the only problems with the book are also reasons why I liked it. Lily Kaiser's journey is a little too convenient throughout the book but that can be just perfect sometimes. It can be exactly what I need to read or listen in order to balance out the pressure of the world.

So, yes, the book is a little too neat. The story a little too beautiful and coincidental and works a little too well, but I didn't mind it at all. Mostly because it was also written incredibly well. It moves between times, giving insight into Rose Gallway's life that Lily doesn't readily have and let's the reader piece some of it together on our own. I do enjoy that. And then the author lays it all out and it's just perfect. A little too perfect, like in one of those rom-coms that we watch to feel good but that we all know aren't the way the world works.

I really loved that about it. It's going to be one of my comfort books, to peruse when I'm down, maybe listen to when I wanna revel in new beginnings, like the mood I re-watch Stardust in. If you've read a few too many mysteries lately, or too many books that ripped your heart out (like I have recently), than this is the perfect book to recover with. It's comforting and sweet and romantic and doesn't take itself too seriously. But it's not the book for that serious deep read. Don't expect it to be.

The book drew me in fairly quickly. I mean, right in the prologue. I found the writing style compelling. It was all the little things, like the way the backstory between the rest of the family and the protagonist unraveled, the way she dealt with her suspicions, and way the author delivered snippets of point of view from the antagonist, and the way that the author kept enough ambiguity in the antagonist's disdain for the protagonist that I wasn't entirely sure who it was until the reveal. I'd had suspicions, but the author did a really good job of making everyone suspicious until close to the end. 

While I thoroughly enjoyed the book, it did not blow my mind or provide some new wisdom about life, so that's why it only got 3 stars. It's a good, short book that I'd easily recommended to anyone. 

It's not very often that a work of fiction gets to me as much as this one did. It was beautiful and haunting and familiar and foreign all at the same time.

The book is written as a sort of memoir. The protagonist reminds the reader several times that it is both fiction and memoir. She goes travels between the present and the past and doesn't always let us know and that can be confusing at times. It lends to the feeling that the protagonist is haunted by her past, that she can so easily drift into memories and stop seeing the world as it is around her in that moment. I loved that it gave a bigger picture of the protagonist as a person, that these events of her past still had a hold of her, but that she was working to let them go.

There is something very powerful about taking deliberate time to work through what haunts us, to let go of the shame we feel in our past, to stop letting it hurt us.

I'll be honest, I listened to the audiobook, which was 13 hours long and read by Emily Woo Zeller. Zeller is amazing, giving the book a full performance, complete with the reverie that really let me know when she was drifting between times. Fortunately, having listened instead of read the book, I could hear the pronunciations of the beautiful names that I would have otherwise just butchered.

As far as the feminist side of things go, this is definitely one of those books that I picked it solely because of Women In Translation month and would not have found any other way. It's proof that setting out to find diverse books to read on purpose allows me to find books that would not have otherwise been in my path and to appreciate stories that I would not otherwise have the opportunity to hear/read. It lets me step into places and history that I was never aware of, such as a sweatshop in Korea during the last century. In that same vein, it's great to read the stories of ordinary women. I know we get caught up in the women breaking barriers and starting revolutions, but we need to remember the ordinary women too. We need to remember the ones who join unions and those who don't, the ones who can only go to school because of work programs, the ones who finish and those who don't, the ones who find their dreams and those who don't.

While the content keeps this from being the kind of story that I could recommend to anyone, this is the kind of book I wish they would include in curriculum for world or Eastern literature. To use her own words to explain the importance of this:

History is in charge of putting things in order and society is in charge of defining them. The more order we achieve, the more truth is hidden behind that neat surface... Perhaps literature is about throwing into disarray what has been defined... About making a mess of things, all over again.

If diversity or feminism or women's lives are among the things you like to read about, this is definitely a book for you. Also, check out the rest of Shin's books here.