Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

How did this make it onto any sort of book awards list at all? I normally follow editor choice lists, or take up books that have won or at least been considered for awards but I could not wait to get to the end of this book to make sure that my poor opinion was not somehow upset by some miracle of writing in the last chapters- it wasn't. This is absolute trash writing! Paper-thin characters surround the central character despite just about every single character needing a full description of what they are wearing and, really, there are just too many characters in this brooding, tragic tale. Sunja's childhood with Hoonie was good and it was good to know Korean culture up to that point. However, I don't need to know about Hansu's driver or the whore he beats up in his fancy car, or the secret Korean gardener Hansu hardly ever sees. I blame the editor here for letting this get past Isak's death. The book could have ended there because the rest of the book seems like a frustrating attempt at giving us a further look into Sunja's tragic life and the last chapters are basically running on fumes. And, really, was it not obvious that Sunja and Hansu were going to meet again? Straight out of a Harlequin romance novel. Noa shoots himself? In pacifist gun-banning Japan? Not likely. Just examples of the author not knowing how to deal with her characters' arcs and an editor who could not direct their writer to better ends. Throwing in gay and lesbian encounters was just blatant reaching. That a study-guide is pretentiously added to the digital edition shows how high this author thinks of their own labor or wants it considered. Seems evident this author's college idea for this book never developed much further than that. I'm truly sorry I wasted precious time reading this but felt warning others is worth the extra time invested in writing this review.