I'd put off reading this as it wasn't something that I would normally pick up. I've been really pleasantly surprised.

It's a family saga, beautifully entwined with the legends and myths of Hawai'i. Themes of poverty, crime, Americanisation run through this story that, at the centre, is a tale of a family living through those things.

I know little about Hawai'i. It felt alienating to read at times and I wanted to shake all of the characters at times and stop them destroying themselves. They were all so fragmented and broken away from each other, and the way this mirrored the fragmentation of the island, and the land was glorious and hard to read.

It's not a 5* because it was pretty miserable for quite a while, and I wanted these patterns of behaviour to stop. But it is a beautifully written story and I enjoyed it immensely.