My Book Review of ‘An Eternal Lei’ — Debbi Mack

Hi! Today, I’m reviewing An Eternal Lei by Naomi Hirahara. Yeah, I really enjoyed this book a lot. One of the things I liked about it is that it’s set in Hawaii and you get a real feel for the place. It contains Hawaiian and Japanese terms, which are explained in the back, if you wanna look them up. I like that about it. I also love the story. I thought the story was well told and suspenseful, and I will say at the very beginning, what goes on here is this woman is found washed up on the beach with this lei on her that has these … I won’t go into it too much. I’ll just say that she almost dies. And that’s all say about that. But the thing is, the protagonist keeps checking into this woman and I kept wondering why. Why?

And she even brings it up herself. The protagonist keeps saying, “Why am I doing this?” And the thing is it’s set during the pandemic and the very real effects of the pandemic on people have to be pretty bad in Hawaii, I would think, for many reasons. I mean, I can just imagine, and she has this ice shack and business is not-so-good.

Anyway, I won’t go into it, but I will just say that I really think it’s great that this story was told during the pandemic. Number one, because it’s just part of, you know, it really just infuses the whole plot and kind of explains a lot and gives you a feel for this character and just how bored she is and how much she wants to help and deal with the situation. And you just like her for that. And then, the other thing was, I keep hearing you shouldn’t write about, you shouldn’t set a story during the pandemic, or you know, you can’t do this or it’ll date it.

Give me a break, people. I mean, do we have to go through and update Raymond Chandler’s outdated reference for being drunk, which was at the time “tight”? Who would often talk about being tight? When I was a kid that used to confuse me a little bit until I realized what that meant.

Anyway, you understand it in context and it reflects a time and seriously people should read this, you know, just so they can kind of say, “Oh yeah, boy, that was a time, wasn’t it?” Anyway, I loved the book and recommend it. That’s it. Thanks very much.

You can also buy this book on Amazon. Buy it as an audiobook from Apple. Or buy it from Barnes & Noble. Finally, it’s also available in print from my bookstore.

Originally published at https://www.debbimack.com on April 15, 2022.