Reviews with content warning for Gore - Fifty Words for Rain

Reviews tagging 'Gore'

Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie

1 review

martachbc's review

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

𝔽𝕚𝕗𝕥𝕪 𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕕𝕤 𝕗𝕠𝕣 ℝ𝕒𝕚𝕟 is tough for me to review, because I didn’t hate it, but I struggled with it a lot. I actually finished it a while ago (if you can’t tell from the decidedly not-winter pic), but I’ve been marinating on it since.

Set in Japan right after WW2, Fifty Words for Rain tells the coming-of-age story of Noriko Kamiza, the biracial child of her upper-class mother and an American soldier. Her mother leaves her with her grandparents who either ignore or abuse her — until her half-brother moves in. Yet her saga doesn’t stop there: She’s sold to a geisha facility, rescued yet again by her brother (with whom she has a very weird, though not line-crossing relationship), stuck in a bizarrely abusive relationship, and periodically, Grandma shows up to tell her how much she sucks. It’s a lot.

Where I think I land on Fifty Words For Rain: the story was compelling, but I had too many complaints to love it fully.

𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕀 𝕃𝕚𝕜𝕖𝕕:

A diverse main character in whom you could find both inspiration and sympathy
A compelling epic spanning decades that made me not want to put it down

𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕀 𝔻𝕚𝕕𝕟’𝕥:

Apparently the author began writing this as a teenager… and TBH the writing was showed that at times
This could border on torture porn. Every bad thing possible happened to Nori.
As a character, Nori’s development felt stunted, then jumpy. I don’t always think she stayed true to her character.

𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕀’𝕞 ℕ𝕠𝕥 𝕊𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝔸𝕓𝕠𝕦𝕥:

The end.

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