Hotel on the corner of bitter and sweet

I absolutely adored this book. It was probably my favorite read of the year!

A lot of people seem to be saying that because the main characters (Keiko and Henry) were so young that they're feelings/romance wasn't believable. I strongly disagree. First off, this was set a long time ago when (in Henry's culture) boys were considered men at the age of 13. Second, one of the main reasons they developed such a strong mature relationship was because they had almost no one else to rely on in their lives. Henry didn't have his family, neither of them had other friends at school, and both experienced discrimination and racism on a regular basis. Consequently, their relationship meant more to them than a typical adolescent romance might. Third, nobody in the book was claiming they were going to marry at thirteen, they were simply engaged and would probably have had a long (at least a year or more I would say) courtship. Fourth, people even today meet at this age and go on to be together the rest of their lives. It may not be common but it certainly happens, especially if loyalty, commitment, working hard on a relationship, and making sacrifices for each other are values you both adhere to. You can see from Henry's marriage and his determination to look after his wife till the end that he holds these values dear. Fifth, Henry was building a relationship with her family as well, as was more common in traditional cultures and in the past in America, which gave him even stronger ties to her.

Aside from the romance, I was thrilled to read a story that contained tragedies such as war, internment, family breakdown, illness, etc, and yet still managed to be hopeful and have a happy ending! I don't mind sad endings but I really felt this one was uplifting and still fairly realistic. I'd love to have known more about what happened after the scene where the book left off, but at least I can imagine things stayed happy and worked out for everyone.

The historical fiction aspect was great; I honestly knew next to nothing about the Japanese-Chinese conflicts or what it was like to live during the internment camps, so this book was a great introduction because I could really put myself in their shoes. The author combined the emotional and historical pieces beautifully and I liked how diverse the characters were. They weren't all racist or all accepting or whatever, there was a mix. The lunch lady was an especially cool character because I didn't at all expect her to help Henry out so much based on what we'd seen earlier on.

I recommend this book to anyone, especially if you're a fan of romance, historical fiction, or hopeful/spiritual messages. :)

This was selected for the book group at my library. I enjoyed the view into life in Seattle's International District in the 1940s; however, I didn't enjoy the book all that much. It's told in chapters that alternate between the protagonist when he's a boy, ages 12 to about 18, and when he's a man in his 50s. When he's a boy, the tone is naive, as you'd expect. The characters he's describing lack depth. When he's adult, I thought they did, too. I guess I found the tone a bit twee.

Some pieces of the plot didn't make sense to me:

As a child, he wants to protect the Japanese neighborhood, so that when his sweetheart Keiko comes back from the internment camp, she'll have a sense of coming home. But why does he pick a hotel? I don't remember anything they do before she leaves Seattle that involved the hotel--but he needs to retain a place where her family's belongings could still be found years later, so that's the place he protects.

He has the money to take a Greyhound bus to the internment camp because he earned 10 cents an hour working on the weekend, and his aunt gave me a $10 gift. But his family is short of cash, after his father's stroke, so why hasn't his mother asked him to contribute to rent and food?

Sheldon and Keiko's parents think it's fine for a 13-year-old to hop on a Greyhound bus to another state for a weekend trip. Really?

In 1986, his son can do an online search and find information about a woman across the country. That might happen 1996, but not in 1986. There was no such thing as a browser in 1986, and no search engine. It's highly unlikely that she'd have any information about herself available online.