Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If you liked Guernsey and The Potato Peel Society, you will love this book. With authors such as Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants) and Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain) giving this book great reviews how can you not pick it up and give it a try. I was given the book as a Christmas present for those very reasons, and they were on par with how fantastic this book really was.

The topic is a boy meets girl type of story but this happens in 1942 when the Japanese Internment happened in Seattle. You get to read about the story from the side of the boy, who is Chinese, and falls in love with a girl who is Japanese American (born on American soil) but is placed in the internment camps bc of her Japanese background. It's forbidden love in a different place and different time. The common ground is the boy and girl learn to like each other and share some of the same likes, such as jazz music. The boy ends up taking a job with the school cook where he travels to the various internment camps to make meals for the people. This is the way he gets to see his girl friend while she is in the internment camp. Then they continue their relationship through letters, but SOMEONE intercepts the letters from getting to the boy. He thinks that his dear friend has moved on with her life and that sadly, he should do the same. This wonderful story plays out perfectly in the end.



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