Saturday, October 15, 2022

Fifty Words for Rain: A Novel --by Asha Lemmie

 Dutton

September 1, 2020 

ASIN: B082ZQWRT

File size: 2752

Print size: 463 pages

Price: differs with type of book

3 Stars

 

Why, you ask, only 3 Stars? Because it’s the most “neutral” number I can think of, it’s right in the middle. Do I recommend this book? Depends on what you want in a novel. The good news first: It held my interest, I devoured it in one day. So if holding your interest is paramount, then yes, I recommend it. The bad news: It’s a tragedy to do the Bard proud. I think it would depress even the infamous Murphy of various laws. If you feel better after reading a book where if it can go wrong, it will go wrong, then this is the book for you.

 

Alas, I want my fiction (it is, after all, make believe) to end Happily Ever After. I don’t care for downer books. And, yet, I couldn’t put it down. (I had to keep reading for the HEA ending.) I did enjoy the characters and find myself hoping for a sequel where Nori finds her long missing relative, how she manages to work with/against the Yakuza. And, just maybe, that elusive HEA ending. 

 

There are plenty of reviews and plot synopses on the web. The book begins in 1948 when Nori, the child of a black American GI and an aristocrat mother is left with her grandparents at the age of 8. Her grandfather wanted to take her to the back yard and shoot her like he would a sick dog. Her grandmother was slightly more devious and won that battle. If it’s bad, it happens. Nori survives. But at what cost?

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