This was absolutely amazing! I was totally enthralled with this story from beginning to end, I could barely put it down, and when I finally read the last page, the house was dark, I was hungry, thirsty, needed to pee and my neck was stiff. But damn, it was worth it!

This was an interesting read, a bit challenging at times, but the old story of love across time and fated mates is always a draw for me.

I enjoyed the story that was surrounded by the Japanese culture, I think it made it unique.. The world-building was done very well. It did have a few drawbacks with past and present tense, and I would have appreciated more of a backstory of the two main characters since their story is continued from a previous planet, but it was still enjoyable and very different from other time-travel romance-type books I read.

I will look for this author again.

I had no business reading this mash-up of so many genres I am not a fan of (romance, time travel, fantasy, non-classical mythology, etc) so I added a star as an apology. All the characters are dual beings, embodied on Earth in various points in history and also from another planet called Zelania. Princess Tafui M'kale is an African mythological warrior woman reincarnated as an underground railroad hero in feudal Japan, and now an undefeated martial arts master, with professional-grade culinary skills who left the medical field to find success in an entirely new field. Soichiro Toshibana was a samurai and is currently a handsome business tycoon known as The One-Eyed Dragon because of his eye patch. The Goddess Nyemah is trying to restore balance to Zelania by reuniting these two strong-willed immortal beings.

In this alternate reality version of Japan, graphic design firms hire middle-aged foreigners with limited experience, the board game Monopoly is widely played, Japanese address each other by first name, and also hug and cheek kiss and back slap each other. I honestly thought this read as though someone asked ChatGPT to write about time traveling aliens reincarnated in Tokyo, in the breathless style of Kevin Kwan. If you like Love Among The Sakura, you're in luck because PJ Sanchez-Urcuyo has a sequel coming out for you.

thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy. I really enjoyed this and will be getting copies for my shop.

This book was DNF for me, great concept, wonderful world building based off Japanese history. But the writing was just really off, especially the dialog. Large chunks of it did not sound right or like something anyone would really say. It also had no life to it and just made everything come across as disconnected.

This book was average at best because I found there was a lot of filler and the story just ok.
I liked the setting and the fact it presented inter-racial romance. However, the story didn't hook me in and there were many boring parts that I wanted to skip or speed through.

I really liked the premise of this book and thought it had a lot of promise. The story is fascinating, and I would have liked more of the backstory or seeing the main characters' previous lives and encounters.

The writing wasn't really for me - sometimes the dialogue felt forced or sentences seemed repetitive. This made it difficult for me to connect with the main characters.

There were so many elements of this book that I definitely like in theory, but ultimately I did not enjoy here.

There is more story here than what is actually given to us. The beginning of the novel does a lot of telling to set the story, and not enough showing. It can even be said that all of the telling took away from the suspense. We don’t even get to enjoy or fully process the revelation of who the child might be before the male lead says it in POV.

This story would have done better as a series, and not a one-shot. The stories of their previous lives - including what Tafui was doing before she came to earth - are things that should have been told. I will give P.J. Sanchez-Urcuyo that they tried, but the fact remains that this novel needed more than a few scenes.

Initially uncertain about "Love Among the Sakura," I still took a chance. The writing style, especially dialogue, felt forced, but it didn't spoil the story. While not my usual genre, many may enjoy it. The book has potential but needs editing. It's a promising debut with room for improvement

This book is written by a first time author and I want to start by saying thank you for allowing me to arc read it and congratulations! It’s a very interesting passion filled book and the storyline is very interesting!

The style of writing, especially the dialogue, it feels a little staged and unnatural, however this doesn’t take away from the story!

Although this book isn’t really up my street, I feel like a lot of readers would LOVE this.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and again the Author for allowing me this arc read

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Love Among the Sakura follows award-winning graphic artist Tafui Le as her job at the Aki No Rio group leads her on a journey where her secret identity as an alien princess whose fated mate has waited centuries to be reunited with her complicates both her career and her budding romance with the company's mysterious owner, Soichiro Toshibana.

I thought the premise of this book had a lot of promise, and I can see so many of those ideas on the page. Our romantic leads' centuries-long history, the idea that Soichiro has had to lose and find Tafui across the years and the galaxy, even the Japan setting and clear influence of Japanese history.

Unfortunately, for me, this book was bogged down by a lot of issues I had with the writing. Most notably, I found the dialogue between characters incredibly unnatural and clunky. Not only did many characters' lines feel like something no one would ever say, but often the flow of conversations between characters also came across as incredibly disconnected and unnatural. An aspect that I think exacerbated the dialogue issues for me was that I did not feel grounded in the physical space of any setting in the book. I did learn quite a lot about Japanese culture and history through some moments which over-described the museums or historical locations that the characters visited, but I couldn't tell you one valuable detail about their office, or anyone's homes, or the vast majority of public spaces they occupy in any given scene. Since the lack of rich detail in the setting left me feeling like I was floating in space, watching two basically disembodied characters talk to each other in such inauthentic ways only furthered my feelings of disconnect with the writing.

I also wish I had understood more, ultimately, about Soichiro and Tafui's history -- the alien parts, specifically. There was some context provided in the book, but I think a lot of it was presented in ways that were more confusing than helpful (the whole prologue really threw me for a loop) or was otherwise clarified late enough in the story that I almost didn't care anymore. I think there's a balance that could have been struck between history and the present that wasn't quite nailed down.

Beyond that, there were some technical aspects that needed some work. Occasionally, the writing would shift between past and present tense, sometimes mid-sentence, in ways that were clearly just looked over in editing rather than included as an intentional part of the story. The POV would also slide between characters in ways that seemed "convenient" to the narrative, but often left me having to backtrack to figure out where exactly we moved from one character to the other. I think for this issue, alternating chapters between POV characters would have been incredibly helpful, as this would also have allowed each POV to truly breathe on its own, and would've provided clearer space for those contextualizing details about the couple's past that often cropped up when we briefly stepped into Soichiro's POV. And finally, I'm not sure whether it was an issue just with my e-galley, or if it occurs in the finalized versions of the book, but there were consistent issues with missing, mis-formatted, and misplaced punctuation throughout. Punctuation is ultimately a pretty minor thing, but a lot of what was missing or incorrect was quotation marks, which made the dialogue difficult to differentiate from the regular narration.

I want to be clear that I did not wholly dislike this book. I see its potential, and I see the passion behind it. I think there were some emotional moments that it generally achieved, and I was certainly interested enough in the story to finish it despite the issues I had with the writing. And, ultimately, I think all the issues I noted are very fixable and just a matter of some focused, intentional edits. This is a promising debut, and I think this book will find the readers who are able to see and appreciate that promise.

Nice read. I enjoyed the novel, found it to be interesting. I would certainly recommend it to people. The contents were pleasant for the subject matter of the novel.