Nicole Michelin is a middle school English teacher in her thirties. She was born in Japan to missionary parents, but her mother died when she was a young child and her father, who suffers from depression, never talks about it. He raised her in North Carolina where Nicole currently lives. She is very close to her grandma Ducee and her best friend Grable.

Nicole runs a website where she gives out help and info about caring for fish. A man named Harrison Michaels from Japan emails her one day and the two begin corresponding through email on a daily basis. As the story goes on, Nicole finds herself falling for Harrison and asks him for a photo, which he happily sends to her. But shortly after, Nicole doesn't get an email from Harrison for a few days. She wonders what is wrong. Then one day, Harrison emails her a single line:
'Nicole, my mother remembers the night you were born.'
Nicole herself knows little about her mother, yet always wonders and misses her dearly.
Stunned, Nicole realizes Harrison's mother must have known her own mother. She decides she needs to overcome her fear of flying and go to Japan to search out answers.

I thought Rain Song was a touching read. I found myself wanting Nicole to overcome her fears, hop on the plane to Japan, find out about her mother and find Harrison. ( )

From now on, I'm going to check with Library Things little "will you like this book?" feature before I put in for an early reviewer. It said I probably wouldn't like this book (after the fact) and it's not that I disliked it, it just wasn't my cup of tea. LT knew me better than I knew myself. :-)

I thought Rain Song was just Okay. I enjoyed the characters and the story but did have some minor issues with it. And overall, it just wasn't one of my favorites. ( )

NCLA Review -Nicole Michelin was born in Japan where her parents were missionaries. Something terrible happened when she was very young and her mother died. She and her father returned to North Carolina and never spoke about it again. Through her website where she gives information about the care of fish, Nicole meets Harrison Michaels. She discovers he lives in Japan and knew her family when they lived there. He knows more about her childhood than she does, and provides answers to many of Nicole's questions. Nicole must overcome her fear of flying before she can go to Japan and come to terms with her past so she can welcome her future. This is Alice Wisler's first novel and she has done an excellent job. I look forward to reading more from this new author. This would be a very good book for a book club and there are questions for discussion in the back of the book. Rating: 4 —PD Bethany House 2008, 295p, paper, 9780764204777, $13.99 [FIC] ( )

For the amount of time that this book spends leading up to the final events of the story (which play out very quickly), it ends very abruptly. It is not a satisfying ending in that it just kind of stops rather than having some semblance of a true conclusion. I'm left feeling like there should be more to the story.

Nicole, as a character, is fairly bland. She has quirks as any main character is expected to have, but overall, I'm left unexcited by her, and I found it difficult to continue on reading through the story because there was no connection with the main character to make me want to see her story out to the finish.

It isn't a very long story, which is probably a good thing - I can't imagine the build-up drawn out any farther than it was. The book is not a great one by any means. Something amusing for a little while with perhaps a bit too many sayings that sound like they ought to be in a cliche quotes book. ( )