This was one of my favorite middle grade historical fiction diaries as a kid and I really loved it at the time, but I was a little bit disappointed by it as an adult. Compared to the other diaries like this I've reread in the past couple years, it just didn't feel as strong. It felt like it lacked the depth that a lot of them have.

I think part of the reason is that this book is so short and so fast. It's only about 130 pages of diary and doesn't even start in Hawaii. The main character is only in Hawaii a couple of weeks before Pearl Harbor, and only a couple of weeks after. It doesn't feel like she had enough time to set down roots or meet friends or get invested in Hawaii as a place. I think the whole thing needed to be slowed down. I do think this book is fairly shorter than a number of the other diaries in this series.

I also wasn't a big fan of the epilogue. The epilogues of these books usually wrap them up and give an idea of what could have happened in people's lives of the time (in a child friendly way, of course), but this one just seemed unnecessarily depressing and pointless. It felt like a bit of a sucker punch. I don't mind a good depressing ending because sometimes they add so much depth, but this one felt cheap.

I dunno, it's probably good for kids but one of those books that doesn't hold up as well for adults. I certainly loved it as a child. I just wished I loved my reread of it as much as I did some of the other diaries.