My experience with this book was not what I was expecting. My rating is kind of an average of how I felt about the different parts of this book, which I think worked to varying degrees of success.

I loved the first third-to-half of this book. As a historical fiction, I think it hits the mark, especially in the first part. I learned about Korea and the Japanese occupation of that country, which isn't something I knew much about previously. I thought it was really interesting to see the social dynamic between the peoples of these two countries and sad to see the political issues that made Koreans essentially second-class citizens in their own country.

I enjoyed the story and characters we were following in the first part of this book. Isak and Sunja were a couple I really wanted good things for. I rooted for them as individuals and as a family. I loved the dynamic between them and also Sunja and Kyunghee, her sister-in-law. Yoseb, Isak's brother, wasn't my favorite, but he is absolutely a product of his time and culture, and I didn't see him as a bad guy, just very flawed. At the same time, I wanted their family to be happy.

I really enjoyed this book showcasing the ladies as strong and capable people, willing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, not content to let the men in their lives take care of everything, while still being cognizant and respectful of their culture and what was expected of them as wives and mothers in their situations. The way Sunja insists on helping to support her family after

Isak is imprisoned

really cemented her in my heart. I was really connected to these characters at this part of the story. It was absolutely a 5-star book at that point for me.

Then, we moved on to focus on the next generation. At this point, my enjoyment of the story waned. I just didn't care as much about Noa and Mozasu. I felt like the story could've just been about Sunja and Isak, with Kyunghee and Yoseb as the dominate side characters, and I would've been content. Once we get to the generation AFTER Noa and Mozasu, my interest had all but vanished.

I think one of the main problems I had was that there was a distance in the writing that just didn't allow me to connect to the characters like I wanted to, aside from Sunja and Isak. I think that as more and more characters were added to the landscape, the ability to form connections dissipated because of the detached style. This book is written in 3rd person, which is fine, but it feels very detached. We never get really close to the characters, especially later in the book, insteading just flitting along from one person to another. We're never with any one character long enough to form attachments to them. And many of the characters we follow aren't even part of this family, and their stories did nothing for me. I would've rather stuck with the family members and had them more fully-developed.
Also, this detached style made moments that should've had emotional impact completely fall flat for me. There would be these tragic things going on, but it's being relayed to us in such a lackadaisical way that I couldn't muster up any real emotion over it. One example is

Noa's death. Actually, his entire story after he learns of his patronage is a big miss for me, mostly because there really isn't any story. He's missing, he's found, he dies by suicide. But the way we're told that he dies is almost as an afterthought tacked on at the end of a paragraph. He's mentioned in passing once or twice more after the fact, but we're given no real reason for him to take his own life. Considering that none of these people's stories would've happened this way if it was for Noa makes it all feel even more pointless, because it feels like the author kind of forgets about him.

I know it's bound to happen in a book that covers nearly 60 years of time, but this book seemed to really skim over things that I actually wanted to know about and then deep dive into characters and events that I didn't care about in the slightest.

Also, some of the language being used felt very stilted and awkward, especially when characters are having dialogue about or during sex. It just doesn't feel authentic to how people actually talk about or during intimacy. Perhaps it was because I was listening to the audio that this felt very obvious to me, but those sections read like bad erotica. No subtlety whatsoever.

So with the first half being a 5, and the second half being a 2, I've decided to average out my rating to 3 stars. Technically that would be 3.5, but since the ending wasn't great it gets bumped down instead of up to 4.