HONEY IN THE WOUND
by Jiyoung Han
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Arc Review
Pub Date April 7, 2026
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster
I will be honest with you. I hesitated before picking this one up.
I know this history. The Japanese occupation of Korea, the comfort women, the systematic brutality of the Imperial Army. I have read about it before. Books like White Chrysanthemums and One Left are not books you walk away from easily, and I was not sure I had the heart or the strength for another one. But this is an ARC that publishes tomorrow, and so I sat down with it.
I could not put it down. I cried and am still crying writing this.
Honey in the Wound is Jiyoung Han's debut novel, and it is remarkable. Han follows several generations of one Korean family across the twentieth century, from the mountain villages of 1902 all the way to modern Seoul and Tokyo. The women of this family carry gifts that are magical. A sister transforms into a tiger to protect her family. A mother's voice compels anyone around her to speak the truth. A granddaughter sees into the dreams of those she loves. And at the center of it all, Young-Ja, who cooks her emotions into everything she makes.
Here is what struck me about those gifts. They are not fantasy inventions pulled from thin air. They are the things mothers do every single day, turned up to their fullest possible power. We become fierce as tigers when our children are threatened. We coax and soothe and somehow get the truth when needed. We cook with everything we feel and the people we feed know it. We lie awake reading the moods and hearts of the people we love. Han took the invisible labor and love of ordinary women and made it visible, made it magic, and made it matter. In a story about women who were stripped of every form of power imaginable, that choice is profound.
Young-Ja is the character who stayed with me. Her arc from a warm and sunlit childhood to what the Imperial Army does to her and to thousands of women like her is devastating. Han does not try to soften what happened to the comfort women. Their stories are brutal. What happened to them was brutal. These things happened. We cannot forget.
Han's prose is beautiful and devastating. Her words take you through the story so you can witness what happened and understand the stories of the women who endured and those lost through this atrocity. It makes you understand the shame the women were forced to carry afterwards.
Though I understand why people will reach for that comparison, this is not Pachinko. This book carries a heavier load. It sits closer to White Chrysanthemums and One Left in what it asks of you and what it gives back. It is historical fiction that refuses to let history stay abstract.
The ending is historically grounded and that is both its strength and its sorrow. Women are still fighting. Women are still waiting. And I found myself hoping that even one of them gets the apology they deserve, while knowing it could never be enough.
Jiyoung Han is a debut novelist and she writes like someone who has been waiting a long time to tell this story. I hope people read it. We absolutely cannot forget what happened.
Content note: this novel includes depictions of sexual violence, torture, and the comfort women system. Please go in prepared.
Thank you Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Where to Purchase:
If you liked this, you might also enjoy:
White Chrysanthemumsby Mary Lynn Bracht: the book that sits closest to this one, following a Korean comfort woman and her sister across decades of survival and silence.
One Left by Kim Soom: a devastating novel told from the perspective of one of the last surviving comfort women, for readers who want to go even deeper into this history.
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee: the multi-generational Korean saga that most readers will reach for as a comparison. Also beautiful but not specifically about comfort women.
All the books mentioned can also be purchased through my storefront
