My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my free digital ARC! Japanese literature almost always hits the spot for me, so I was disappointed that this one left me underwhelmed. It’s a short book, almost a novella, spanning four seasons and chronicling 20-year-old Chizu’s move to Tokyo from a small town. She moves in with a distant family friend, 70-year-old Ginko, and the pair strike up an uneasy alliance. Chizu is a difficult character to root for. I’m usually all in for a character bumbling through their twenties, not knowing what it is they want or even who they are yet, but lord she was tough to like. She was often unnecessarily rude to Ginko as well, like hello this lady is letting you live in her house for a pittance?! Not particularly memorable I’m afraid, though the translation by Jesse Kirkwood was smooth as butter.