Reviews

Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher

dianagarcia's review against another edition

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5.0

Es el libro más bonito que he leído nunca, nunca antes había querido que 1154 páginas se convirtieran en 1154 páginas más. Intenté alargar la lectura todo lo que pude, ahora me queda un sentimiento de vacío que no se como voy a poder llenar. Me llevo para siempre con mucho cariño a Judith y a Jeremy y a los Carey-Lewis. En definitiva, un libro precioso.

rbgeiss's review

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

shirleytupperfreeman's review

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At nearly 1000 pages, this book requires an investment of time. But it's a great British WWII saga in which to escape. I read it decades ago but couldn't remember the details. Really enjoyed losing myself again in the story of Judith and her family and friends. You might shed a tear or two along the way.

ljchicago's review

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It’s good! It’s very long - 968 pages. I’m about halfway through.

gwalt118's review against another edition

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5.0

I savored my third Rosamunde Pilcher novel over the course of a month, and I’m absolutely thrilled that’s how I chose to read it. Out of the three Pilcher novels I’ve read – Winter Solstice, The Shell Seekers, and Coming Home – I can confidently say that Judith Dunbar, the protagonist in Coming Home, is my favorite character. I still think Winter Solstice is my favorite novel of the three, but Judith is a phenomenal and well-developed character.

Over the course of Coming Home, we see Judith grow up, fall in and out of love, mourn the loss of family members, find and lose friends, discover what it means to be a member of a family through love rather than blood, and find her home in both the physical and emotional sense. The writing, the characters, the sweeping tale of ordinary people during extraordinary times, the strong sense of place – it’s all immensely well done.

This is a tale of found family, of how people and places can be “home,” and what it means to actually “come home” to people, to places, to feelings, to oneself. I absolutely loved this book. Like Winter Solstice, I will most assuredly reread it and it will have a place on my bookshelf forever.

rebroxannape's review

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5.0

This is my favorite of Rosamunde's "Big" books. Her little books are gems. I loved the setting of the novel and the WWII time period in England. Loved the romance, but there was too long a time and too long a misunderstanding, where we are teased with them crossing paths again and resolving everything but it just doesn't happen until the end. Such a pleasure to read about two nice people with no horrible "issues". Loved the mini-series as well!

macheath's review

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emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Read on a recommendation by the fine SF writer Jo Walton. This long novel is usually shelved as a romance novel because it's concerned with the lives of women but it's not really that, it's what used to be derisorily called a "women's novel" (maybe they still are) as though the lives of women are inherently of less interest than the lives of men. Starting in the 1930s, we follow main character Judith, a girl who is enrolled in a boarding school in Cornwall when her parents move for work reasons to Singapore. As we progress through Judith's schooldays and her friendship with an upper-class family who take her in when family complications arise, World War Two begins to creep in around the edges. This is a book about the idyllic last summers of the 1930s, after which everyone's lives irrevocably changed. There is deprivation and rationing, the charming young men in Judith's social circle begin to disappear, she joins military service, and her parents and young sister, well, they are in Singapore. To her credit, Pilcher doesn't succumb entirely to nostalgia; a sexual assault occurs, and Judith comes to realize that with the wealth and privilege her adopted family enjoys also comes irresponsibility. This was really good, a vividly described and compelling doorstopper of a novel to just sink into.

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joanns's review against another edition

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  • Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

The perfect book to begin 2024 and a new favorite!

jbarr5's review

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5.0

Coming home by Rosamunde Pilcher
Have read some of the author's other works and have enjoyed them.
Book starts out with one life that starts out as a young teen and her world is turned upside down.
1935 and Judith Dunbar and her friend Heather Warren are attending school where Christmas parties are just ending and they are on their way home.
Judith will not be returning once school starts in the new year. She will be going to the strict St. Elizabeth where they have uniforms and she will be a boarder. Her mother and toddler sister would return to the Far East as they join her father who's working.
Very long book but worth all the detailed descriptions of not only the surrounding countryside but her feelings along the way. Broken up into her teen years and adult years.
Story also follows people she and the family meet over the years. Love parts about knitting for the troops as I've done that recently myself.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

carolainam's review against another edition

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5.0

4,5 *

Llorando todas las noche durante casi dos semanas, madre mía. Cornualles, bien de melancolía, segunda guerra mundial, amantes separados y familias rotas, un dramón de los buenos, como para no llorar.

No le doy el 5 por ciertos comentarios a los que ya acostumbra Pilcher. Sí, ya sé que era anciana cuando escribió esto, y muy inglesa, pero no puedo no tenerselo en cuenta. Por suerte en esta ocasión han sido breves y en contraposición había discursos que defendían la independencia económica de la mujer así como la importancia de su inclusión en la educación superior y la libertad sexual de las mismas.