I apprecitate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I found this a really interesting read and the characters are quite engaging. it kept me reading until the end. I highly recommend.

I’m very interested in the topic but this book is just not drawing me in. I’ve been trying for a few days and I just cannot get into it. DNF for now. I may try to come back to it later.

I really wanted to like this but the story isn’t going anywhere. The narrative is confusing and hard to follow and there are way too many details about the unimportant while the interesting parts seem to be glossed over. It’s taken me three days to get to 50% and I can’t go any further.

Very slow paced, difficult to get into...I have read previously about the comfort women provided for Japanese soldiers during WWII, but this novel lacked description and seemed to centre on unimportant facts. In my opinion.

A good story, but I wish there was more character development. I’ve read many books about comfort women, and this one was good albeit a bit shallow. Glad I read it though!

4.5 stars. Creatures of Comfort is the heartbreaking story of two Korean sisters, Hana and Jina, who are sent first to Manchuria to work in the organized brothels of the Empire of Japan during WWII which are referred to as “Comfort Stations”, after their family angers an important Japanese General. The sisters struggle for survival in not only harsh conditions, but in what amounts to sanctioned rape on a daily basis. As Koreans, they are treated even worse than the other girls, but the sisters have each other and use their relationship to survive. Meanwhile, their Grandmother has been sent to a sanitarium, and their father to a labor camp, and the sisters use their dream of reuniting with their family to survive.

Comfort Women was a title given to the women who were often taken, stolen, or recruited to work in “factories” by Japan during WWII. These comfort stations were set up all over their empire. To this day, Japan refuses to acknowledge or apologize for this atrocity, and the survivors and now their children continue the fight.

The story lost something for me when the sisters were moved to Saipan. And then the ending was very abrupt, almost as if the author was given a page or word limit and suddenly had to end the story. Although it’s easy to guess the outcome of the characters, I personally would have liked to see justice done to Mikimoto after the pain and suffering her caused the family. Otherwise, it’s a well written book that was hard to put down.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers, and the author for an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I'm glad that we get more real historical facts, discussions and also novels about comfort women, which is certainly an extremely dark stain in history and still not widely acknowledged and even denied by some.

I love Asian literature and the blurb promised to be similar to Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, so I had to request this 🙂

Things I enjoyed:
- how the topic of comfort women was handled
- the novel felt well researched
- focus on sisterhood

Things I didn't enjoy:
- slow pace (I usually don't mind character driven slow paced books, but this too slow for me personally)
- characters and development
I always felt kept at arms length and never felt super invested. The arguments between sisters were a bit repetitive as it was made clear very early in the book how different the sisters are. Later it became tedious reading about their differences.
Furthermore I found that Jina didn't develop fast enough for my liking. How often does she mouth off and get herself and/or others in trouble before she gets it?
I understand she's a strong-willed teenager with her opinions, but I can't imagine her not understanding sooner how serious the situation is she and her sister are in.

I still believe that, if you can overlook my critic, readers of Asian historical fiction will enjoy this.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.