Tokyo Hearts - A Japanese Love Story by Renae Lucas-Hall
| Tokyo Hearts - A Japanese Love Story by Renae Lucas-Hall | |
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| Category: Women's Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: You'll really feel as though you're in the centre of Japan with this story of how the yong fashionistas live and love. Renae Lucas-Hall popped into Bookbag Towers to chat to us. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 192 | Date: June 2012 |
| Publisher: Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1781487693 | |
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Takashi is a student in his final year at university. He works pretty hard, but his heart belongs to Haruka, who was a fellow student until she had to leave when her father was taken ill. As a rule they meet once a week in a cafe - but Takashi fears that Haruka only sees him as a friend, particularly when he discovers that she's seeing a wealthy ex-boyfriend on a regular basis. Jun's good-looking too and Takashi realises that he has little to offer, particularly as Haruka loves shopping for designer goods. They're in fashionable Tokyo where style, sophistication and fashion are a way of life. How will it work out, particularly when Haruka is planning on moving to Kyoto - which is also where the ex-boyfriend lives - and earthquakes seem to be happening regularly in the capital?
For me the star of this book was Japan itself: you really will feel as though you're there on the fashionable streets, in the department stores, on the bullet rain - or even in the tiny apartments which pass for home for so many people like Takashi. You'll sit under the cherry blossom trees in the park - or freeze as you wait for a friend in the winter months. It's the Japan which belongs to the young and in which older people are either rich or struggling to get by. You'll even get a sense of the food that people eat and how much everything costs. You won't be in any doubt about Renae Lucas-Hall's love of Japan.
It's a simple story of love which appears to be unrequited, which is being driven astray by parental emphasis on making a 'good' marriage - where there's money - rather than one based on love. There's a certain innocence about the relationship between Takashi and Haruma - even as friends they seem to be curiously distant - and I didn't completely sense any chemistry between them. What wasn't in any doubt though was their love of the big brand names which seemed to rule their lives and ambitions. There's a few twists along the way before we get a resolution and some of them could only happen in Japan.
Tokyo Hearts was an interesting read and I'd like to thank the author for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
For a non-fiction look at Japan we can recommend Japan Through The Looking Glass by Alan Macfarlane. If you'd like to know more about Japanese food have a look at Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking by Michael Booth.
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Renae Lucas-Hall was kind enough to be interviewed by Bookbag.
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