Come Rain Or Shine By Kazuo Ishoguro

*Spoilers Ahead*

The plot at the beginning was promising, starting with Ray reminiscing about university with Emily and later on including Charlie too. This quickly changed though as I was losing interest by 30 pages in and this says a lot as It's only a 70-page short story.

I found the dialogue to be snippy and confusing throughout, especially with Charlie while travelling. I don't think it helped the story improve all that much.

At first, I found Ray interesting and actually really nice, but by the mid-way point, I thought he was a bit thick. Reading it though, I think he regrets not taking his chances on Emily (relationship wise) while they were still at university.

I found Emily to be rude and condescending throughout the story too, telling Ray he was useless despite him telling her he has his shit together. She wasn't having any of his explanations telling her he was ok.

Charlie took full advantage of Rays visit by trying to help him fix his marriage. I dislike that Ray was made to look dysfunctional and like a lesser man than Charlie to make him look a better person, even though Ray was doing just fine, but just wasn't as successful as his so-called friend.

This book is meant to show the complexity of friendship, but I honestly just show a group of somewhat dysfunctional people being mean to someone they call a friend.

Out of a 5* rating system on Goodreads, I can only give this book 1*.