Japan 1945. Taro is a talented violinist and a kamikaze pilot in the days before his first and only mission. He believes he is ready to die for his country… until he meets Hana. Hana hasn’t been the same since the day she was buried alive in a collapsed trench during a bomb raid. She wonders if it would have been better to have died that day…until she meets Taro.
A song will bring them together. The war will tear them apart. Is it possible to live an entire lifetime in eight short days?
Sherri L. Smith has been called “an author with astonishing range” and “a stellar storyteller” by E. Lockhart, the New York Times-bestselling author of We Were Liars, and “a truly talented writer” by Jacqueline Woodson, the National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming. Here, with achingly beautiful prose, Smith weaves a tale of love in the face of death, of hope in the face of tragedy, set against a backdrop of the waning days of the Pacific War.
The plus about this book is that I learned a bit about the Pacific Front and how the Japanese women support the soldiers. I also learned about how they trained their kamikaze pilots. The book emotionally fell flat for me. The characters felt one-dimensional and while a lot of bad things happened to them, their struggle just didn't come through and grab my heartstrings.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.