The Picture Bride follows the story of three "Picture Brides": Willow, Hong-ju and Songhwa, showing the treatment they received as brides without revealing too much, how some are as young as seventeen, become isolated, and are illiterate. It's definitely a difficult read emotionally, particularly for me as I tend to become too invested in the characters I read about.

The book was definitely hard to get into for me as it provided an introduction to the world of Picture Brides, a practice I was aware of but did not really know too much about. At its core the practice of selecting brides and grooms to matchmake using only their photos, and was predominant in Hawaii and Korea (My understanding of the practice has been helped by Wikipedia). However, it was easy to read the text - just to make that clear.

I say this with any translated book I read but I'm saying it again, the core essence of any book is lost, I won't feel the same emotions reading this in English as I would if I knew Korean and could read The Picture Bride how it was meant to be read. Translation is hard, it's hard capturing just what made The Picture Bride special and bringing it to a new language, An Seon Jae does a wonderful job translating.

Overall, The Picture Bride is a solid read for lovers of historical fiction; a 3-star read.

Thanks to Lee Geum-yi, An Seon Jae, Net Galley, and Scribe UK for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Book #242 of 2022.