This book was such a frustrating read for me. How it is rated so high I cannot even fathom; to date it is the only book that I have rated one star, and I am usually generous with my ratings.

I was initially drawn to the book because it has a lovely cover and I am a cover snob. Even my coworker and fellow cover snob agreed, there is something about the dark blue and the pink that is really quite pleasing. However, upon reading the book, it became clear that I had been bamboozled, and for once my method of choosing books by their covers failed (who could've seen that coming?).

Unlike the cover, there was nothing pleasing about the plot or the writing, which is why I have rated it so low. I took off a few stars for plot, another star for the poor writing, and finally I dropped it down to one star today because months after reading I am somehow still thinking about how mad I am at this book. The plot was entirely too predictable, all of the characters were flat, and the ending was equal parts dull and nonsensical. At the heart of it all it attempted to reconcile poor Nori with her supposed place in society, but it read more as tragedy porn. ( )

This was absolutely heartbreaking. Though I'm not a fan of the ending, Nori's story will stay with me for a while... ( )

I went back and forth between two and three stars. The story held my interest. Everything was SEEPED with drama. That drama was sometimes in line with the characters and plot, and sometimes it just seemed overwrought. I didn't buy the character development. It felt inconsistent. Often characters changed their minds or made snap decisions that didn't seem at all in line with the circumstances or with who they were shown to be up to that point. ( )

I loved this fascinating look at post-war Japan until the end, which made me want to forget the entire thing because it frustrated me. ( )

I've never been much of a tv watcher but even I have seen an episode or two of soap operas over the years. They aren't really my thing but I think what keeps people tuning in every day is the pace of the story, the complications, the constant drama, secrets and their shocking reveals, love, and of course, their outlandishness, all of which serve to take the viewer away from their quotidian life. Asha Lemmie's debut novel, Fifty Words for Rain, is the book version of a soap opera and it has garnered its share of supporters and detractors, just as the tv shows do. I have to admit though, that if I have no interest in tv soap operas, I am only marginally more interested in book soap operas.

Opening in 1948, eight year old Noriko, the illegitimate, mixed race daughter of a Japanese aristocratic mother and a black American GI, is left at the gate of her aristocratic grandparents' home by her mother. Jumping then to two years later, Nori is living in her grandparents' attic, her mother's shame made visible kept hidden and out of sight of everyone outside the family. She is given harsh chemical baths to try and lighten her skin and she has come to understand that her curly hair and complexion are terrible, something no Japanese person would ever value. She is treated badly by her grandmother when she deigns to see Nori and neglected when she doesn't. When her older half brother, Akira, who is her mother's legitimate son and the heir to her wealthy grandparents, comes to live in the house after the death of his father, Nori, for the first time, finds an ally. She is obsessed with her brother and he convinces their grandmother to grant Nori privileges that she has never before been allowed. But this sibling bond can't be allowed to stand and Nori is sold off to a brothel the family owns while her brother is away at school. This is not the last terrible thing that happens to Nori as she goes from trauma to trauma, often at the hands of her bigoted, evil family.

From the opening pages, Nori is an obedient child who faces every bad thing possible: abandonment, abuse--physical, emotional and sexual, isolation, racism, loss and more. Eventually the reader has to wonder just how many terrible things and tragedies must be thrown at Nori to show her resilience as a character. And given all of the soul destroying events in her life at the hands of her grandmother, it makes the end of the novel completely out of character and ridiculously unbelievable. But even from the beginning the novel is unbelievable. It starts with something that calls into question the accuracy of its entire portrayal of post-war Japan. Nori is supposed to be 8 in 1948. That would put her American GI father in Japan in either 1939 or 1940 in order for her to exist. Even a quick internet search suggests that this would have been well night impossible. But Nori needs to be half black and half Japanese in order for the story to work. Pure invented melodrama, especially when added to the litany of traumas she faces throughout her life. The novel does crack on at a decent clip making a close to 500 page book a quick read, so for those interested in a soap-like survival story or trauma porn, this might be the right book. Certainly a lot of other authors and readers have loved it in ways that I didn't. ( )