I liked the information in the story - I had not yet heard anything about Indonesia during WW2 under the Japanese occupation, only the Philippines and Malaysia - so I learned more of the lanscape of the country at the time and what the Dutch went thru. 

However, the book itself was very slow and felt repetitive at times, getting stuck in the minuscule happenings even when it was the same situation, but then jumping and glossing over the people themselves. You didn’t see any character development or growth, you just felt the overall obvious oppressiveness and depravity of their situation. Not much of how they handled it or what the felt besides despair or confusion or what was going thru their minds outside of missing family members.