On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.
Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be targets. Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the country alive.
Isn't this cover one of the prettiest things you've ever seen? I love it and it fits in perfectly with the book!
This book was well paced and perfectly balanced. Nothing trivial took precedence in the story, the friends weren't annoying and the parental figure- Diane- was what you'd imagine she would be. Learning new things important to the story came at the right times and elicited the right responses.
Katie was a good protagonist. Seeing Japan through her eyes- a gaijin- was very real. She was new to this world and the reader isn't just thrown into a place half-way around the globe (I'm American, so for me it is halfway around the globe) where almost everything is different. She seems like a very normal person and she takes Tomo's secret and the Kami like a normal person would. I find it easy to relate to her, personally, because of her attitude and also because she joins her school's Kendo team. I myself fence and it's something I appreciate when a character does (Kendo, is, at a basic level, just Japanese fencing).
Tomo is a great guy, too. He's definitely a bit of a ass sometimes, but it's just a façade that he wears- and for a good reason. I don't know if you could say he was a "bad-boy" but he's certainly not the good-guy prince charming kind of character. I, personally, love him (book crush alert!). He's definitely a heartbreaker. His and Katie's relationship has its ups and downs but it felt natural how it formed and not over blown like you can sometimes get. It was a big, consuming part of both of their lives, but they also weren't dying when they were away from each other. They were worried (of the Kami, the Yakuza, and plenty of other things) something would happen when they were apart, but it wasn't over the top.
The other characters, like Jun, Sato, Yuki, and Tanaka were all 5-star characters as well. Jun seems like the nice guy and even at the end you can't help but like him. Sato is more of a jerk, but again, in the end he finds a place in your heart (even if it's a small place) and I'm sure that the next book will probably have him in it a bit more. Yuki and Tanaka are good best-friend characters, something I don't say often. They live their own lives, aren't nosy, and cover for Katie when she needs them to. Diane, Katie's aunt, starts out a little hard to like because she's a little strange, but as Katie comes to grow closer to her, so does the reader.
The villain. Always an important part to any story. I don't want to give anything away, but this "villain" can be taken as a good guy and the motives are something that could be taken either way as well. Besides the mysterious someone of which I'm speaking, the Yakuza (Japanese mob) play a major role, and you really can't get much eviler then these guys.
I do recommend reading the eBook (it's free for Kindle, I don't know about nook or other platforms) called Shadow. It takes you all the way from when Katie's mom died to the beginning of this book, setting the story up nicely and also giving you a look into Tomo's head.
The fact that this book was set in Japan was one of the reasons I picked it up in the first place. It's foreign and different and unique. Just reading this book you feel like you're there and I almost wish I was (I could never eat the food there, I'm too picky). The idea of using the Kami and their mythology is something different then I've ever read or seen before and has me wanting to do research of my own.
In short: I really liked this book.
Rating: 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment