Moloka’i

My Rating: 4/5

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3273.Moloka_i

Oh…where do I begin? This book covers some of my favorite decades in history and then some- from Hawai’i’s perspective. Not just Hawai’i’s perspective but Moloka’i’s history too. This book was super enjoyable to read. The writer’s style is somewhere above average, but has a bad habit of just… breaking things to you while going through decades of time in an offhanded way. Like ‘oh so and so died, by the way, like… 13 years ago. We’re here now. I might mention the main’s feeling’s in passing but that’s that I just cheated you out of caring about it’. So while I cared about the main, Rachel, and those closest to her that lasted the longest, I found I didn’t really care, or even remember, the rest. The book felt like it wound on a bit too long, but at the same time, it closed in a way that the Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane- a similar story arc, oddly enough (funny how those similarities occur without meaning to) didn’t. Lane tried to end on a cliffhanger, and as a result was really abrupt. Moloka’i ends with, at the least, some sort of closure for the character’s life. Her whole life. Up to the end, and all in only the important parts. So in that sense, it worked great and we got a sense of Rachel’s existence from her childhood to her old age, but at the same time it dragged in a way that made it feel like you were trying to run a marathon with death happening all the time, death and disappointment and bad news. When things finally started going right for the main, you see more bad news or disappointment or death. It’s real and gritty, too, so I guess I can’t be too upset that a book mirrors life and expectations, but it just felt after a 150 pages of despair and suffering there could be a few…more…happier moments.

That being said I liked this book. It could just be the eras, it could be the main character, it could be the setting, or it could be the glimmer’s where this writer catches their stride, but something about it made me keep reading. I strongly suggest this book if you like age-long sagas, family stories, or Hawai’ian history of the 20^th century.