Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Review for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

I have decided to write a little something about this book because I really enjoyed it quite a lot. I hadn't really expected to like it when I first found out what it was about--namely, romance. I'm not a "romance" kind of person, so I was a little leery of reading it. Once I got started, though, it was a great story.

I'll try not to reveal too much, but here's the basic plot: The story begins in the 1980s with Henry, the main character, who passes the Panama Hotel between Chinatown and what used to be Nihonmachi (Japantown) and sees old belongings being brought up from the boarded-up basement--belongings of Japanese families forced to leave their homes in the 1940s. Over the course of the story, the reader jumps back and forth between Henry's young self, who is struggling to find a balance between what his parents want for him and believe in and his friendship with a girl named Keiko, a Japanese girl. I won't say much more, except that it's about Japanese Internment in World War II and that it has a happy ending.

Overall it wasn't the best book I've ever read, but I loved the descriptions in it. You could see the places the author was taking you. You could imagine what it was like to visit Nihonmachi or the sound of Sheldon's saxaphone echoing down the street. There were a lot of culture references that I didn't completely understand, but beyond that I just really loved the flow of the book. It fit together in a way that made sense to me even though there were a lot of time-skips in it.

What I really liked about the main character especially, though, was that you could connect with him. Yeah, I'm a white girl and I've never been the only white girl in a school full of colored people or anything, but I think we can all relate to how Henry feels whe he's the outcast of the school. I think at some point or another we've all had the same problems he has--we've all had bullies and seen jerks, we've all had crushes that make us do stupid things, and we've all disagreed with our parents over things. I loved that about this book. I could really relate to this Chinese kid.

One of the things I maybe didn't like so much was how underdeveloped some characters were. You didn't get much insight into people like Keiko because everything is from Henry's point of view, and Henry doesn't always know what's really going on behind the scenes. I think perhaps if Keiko had been a bit more developed I might have been more attached to her as a character. By the end I was indifferent towards her, which I don't think was the point. It's not that I didn't like her, just that she could've been more than she was.

On that note, though, there are characters who I think were well-developed (beyond Henry, of course). I think that Sheldon was a totally awesome character, a really cool guy. He's not a main character, but more of a supporting character, and his actions have huge consequences in the book in a weird, twisted sort of way. I just like his personality so much. Though I didn't like Henry's father much, I think his character was well-developed, too. He made me so angry at times that I just wanted to scream along with Henry out of sheer frustration. Nevertheless, it contributes to the book and helps the reader understand why Henry is the way he is.

But enough of me ranting, huh? I don't want to give too much away! I'll end on this note: this book is very bittersweet and I loved it. It wasn't the kind of book you stay up all night reading with your heart racing, but it's one of those books that leaves you with a message. Don't put it down because it's got a little historical fiction in it. It was worth taking the time to read.