Loved it, loved it, loved it! I was dragging my heels from reading this one due to all the hype about it and I finally picked it up for a challenge and I regretted that it's taken me so long to actually read it.

What a wonderful world Arthur Golden has created for his readers. I really liked in that he chose to write it in a memoir kind of perspective and that he's set it up in the beginning with the memoirist (if that's a word?) stating that he could still hear her voice telling him her story because so can I.

Sakamoto Chiyo was born the second daughter of a poor fisherman. Due to failing health of her mother and unfortunate circumstance of the family, she and her sister, Satsu, was sold - she to be a geisha and Satsu to be a prostitute. As an innocent young girl, Chiyo had no idea what it is that she's been brought into and when an attempt to escape failed, her future was looking bleak.

A lucky encounter with a Chairman brought her the smell of the wind of change she wished for but will it bring her what she wants and is it really what she wanted from life?