Sherri L. Smith

Told in two voices, seventeen-year-old kamikaze pilot Taro and fifteen-year-old war worker Hana meet in 1945 Japan, he with no future and she, haunted by the past. Includes historical notes and glossary.

The Blossom and the Firefly

Julie Viravaux

** spoiler alert **
           I can't even begin to express what I felt with this book. The emotions are too raw and too much and yet it's written so calmly so beautifully. 
My heart broke several times while reading, and Hana (the flower) and Taro (the boy) love story is so much more than just love. It's being alive, it's accepting death and then accepting life again. 
(I'm still not over the loss of Nakamura I loved him so much omfg)
Everything is so poetic and so full of meaning.

From the award-winning author of Flygirl comes this powerful WWII romance between two Japanese teens caught in the cogs of an unwinnable war, perfect for fans of Salt to the Sea, Lovely War, and Code Name Verity. Japan 1945. Taro is a talented violinist and a kamikaze pilot in the days before his first and only mission. He believes he is ready to die for his country . . . until he meets Hana. Hana hasn't been the same since the day she was buried alive in a collapsed trench during a bomb raid. She wonders if it would have been better to have died that day . . . until she meets Taro. A song will bring them together. The war will tear them apart. Is it possible to live an entire lifetime in eight short days? Sherri L. Smith has been called "an author with astonishing range" and "a stellar storyteller" by E. Lockhart, the New York Times-bestselling author of We Were Liars, and "a truly talented writer" by Jacqueline Woodson, the National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming. Here, with achingly beautiful prose, Smith weaves a tale of love in the face of death, of hope in the face of tragedy, set against a backdrop of the waning days of the Pacific War.

The Blossom and the Firefly

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