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4.32 AVERAGE
4.32 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
2022 Popsugar Reading Challenge: a book about or set in a non patriarchal society.
This book was SO good! I couldn’t put it down. It was an interesting story about so many things - love, loss, family, friendship- it had it all. This book was beautifully written.
This book was SO good! I couldn’t put it down. It was an interesting story about so many things - love, loss, family, friendship- it had it all. This book was beautifully written.
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“To understand everything is to forgive.”
A beautiful story of friendship, bravery, and strong women who persevere through the unimaginable. Inspiring, shocking, heart wrenching, but ultimately a lesson in forgiveness. Absolutely loved this book!
A beautiful story of friendship, bravery, and strong women who persevere through the unimaginable. Inspiring, shocking, heart wrenching, but ultimately a lesson in forgiveness. Absolutely loved this book!
Lisa See has a way of writing that makes her stories feel so real. It always feels like the people are real and the amount of research done to make the places and time periods feel accurate really shows. This novel in particular has had me incessantly looking up Korean history and talking about the Sea Women to those around me. As with life in general, this book was entirely bittersweet but it was also filled with hardships I'll hopefully never have to face.
The narrative style encourages thoughtful and maybe slower reading, but it wasn't at all boring. Any time I wasn't reading, I found myself wanting to get back to Young-sook and Mi-ja's stories. One of the main themes in this book is forgiveness and who we give it to which didn't so much resonate with me, but I can see how others would gain a lot from it.
Regardless of whether or not the story and characters resonate, this was a fantastic introduction to the history surrounding Jeju Island and the tradition of the haenyeo and was worth reading for that alone.
The narrative style encourages thoughtful and maybe slower reading, but it wasn't at all boring. Any time I wasn't reading, I found myself wanting to get back to Young-sook and Mi-ja's stories. One of the main themes in this book is forgiveness and who we give it to which didn't so much resonate with me, but I can see how others would gain a lot from it.
Spoiler
I do think forgiveness is entirely different than just not holding on to anger, and I don't know that I would have forgiven Mi-ja at the end the way Young-sook did, but this wasn't about me, was it?Regardless of whether or not the story and characters resonate, this was a fantastic introduction to the history surrounding Jeju Island and the tradition of the haenyeo and was worth reading for that alone.
Listening to this story on audio was such a joy, My heart is shattered but in a good way, 100% recommend
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Really excellent historical fiction. It's clear that A LOT of research went into this. I'm happy that I learned about something new. There was some pretty horrific imagery, so if you're sensitive to that, beware. I'm sensitive to it, and it will stay with me a while. I haven't read anything else by Lisa See, so I don't know if that's common for her books. Overall, a compelling story!