Stacking the Shelves #26

This week I channeled my inner aloha spirit and added three books to my Kindle that take place in Hawaii. I have quite a few books that I have already planned to read and review in the next two months so I'm not sure when I will have time to read these novels but definitely by the end of the year.

Jasmin Lolani Hakes just published another book this past  May.  Hula is set in Hilo, Hawai'i and it is a family saga about three generations of women. Hi'i is proud to be a Naupaka, a family renowned for its contributions to hula and her hometown of Hilo, Hawaii. She's never met her legendary grandmother though and her mother has never revealed the identity of her father. To make matters worse, there are unspoken divides within her tight-knit community that have started to grow, creating fractures whose origins are somehow entangled with her own family history. However, Hi'i sees a chance to live up to her name and solidify her place within her family legacy. But in order to win the next Miss Aloha Hula competition, she will have to turn her back on everything she has ever known.

Gaellen Quinn has given us a vivid portrait of the final days of the Hawaiian monarchy, when descendants of American missionaries toppled the throne. Suppressed for a century, this story is a little-known part of American history. We get to view it through the eyes of Laura Jennings, who lives in 1886 San Francisco. As Laura is being fitted for her wedding gown, a tragic accident kills her father and her fiancé. Suddenly alone in the world, Laura goes to Hawaii to live with relatives she’s never met, little knowing that her destiny will become intertwined with those of Hawaii’s last great sovereigns.

Alan Brennert has written a  couple of books set in Hawaii. Daughter of Moloka'i is one I neglected to read when it was published in 2019. This companion tale to Moloka'i tells the story of Ruth, the daughter that Rachel Kalama—quarantined for most of her life at the isolated leprosy settlement of Kalaupapa—was forced to give up at birth. The book follows young Ruth from her arrival at the Kapi'olani Home for Girls in Honolulu, to her adoption by a Japanese couple who raise her on a strawberry and grape farm in California, her marriage and unjust internment at Manzanar Relocation Camp during World War II—and then, after the war, to the life-altering day when she receives a letter from a woman who says she is Ruth’s birth mother, Rachel. I already feel Ruth's emotional pain.  She went through alot during her lifetime.

I got hungry while writing this post so I just ordered a huli-huli chicken dinner from the Hawaiian Brothers restaurant for Uber Eats delivery. It's gonna be tasty!