Page Turners – August 2026 review

‘The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet‘ by Jamie Ford was the Page Turners book for August. This debut novel was published in 2012.

The book has a dual timeline. In 1940s Seattle Henry, a Chinese American teenager and his Japanese sweetheart Keiko are separated by the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. In 1986 the basement of a derelict hotel is opened and the owners find belongings that were stored there by Japanese families who hoped to return after the war. Henry searches the basement for precious memories of Keiko. He was a devoted husband to Ethel but now he is widowed and he finally feels able to tell his son about his first love.

Through this story we learn of the history of the Japanese in America during and after the Second World War – a story that most of us were not very familiar with. We learn not just about community relations in Seattle but also about the wider relationship between the Chinese and Japanese and we see the tensions between Henry’s father’s nationalist feelings and his desire for his son to make a new life in America.

Some of us were initially put off by the title of the book which did not give us much clue as to what to expect. However all of us really enjoyed the book. We found the characters to be engaging and they drew us into the story. Whilst the plot may have been slightly formulaic it was engrossing, especially as it was set in a context that we had not encountered before.

This was a definite page turner. If you would like to read it for yourself, please get in touch and swap it for one of your recommendations.

Deborah Wallis, convenor