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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
What sort of ending was that. Otherwise quite fun, if you don’t think too hard about the mechanics
The structure bounces around in time to give the reader the experience of time travel. Clever. But also exhausting. The long book wore me out, as I literally ran out of steam about 3/4 of the way. Then it became drudgery.
challenging
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Multi-generational family drama, some history mixed in. Not as much action as I was expecting, but there is time travel.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This novel wasn't terrible by any means, but it was not great either. It was squarely in the middle for me. The premise was very fascinating: 3 generations of women working together to avoid catastrophe and reconnect over the years. But the story was just so long-winded I kept losing interest in the story. I think too much time was spent in the backstory and a bit more could have been spared for the work between the women to solve the Chornobyl disaster. The conclusion felt not necessarily rushed, but just kind of thrown together, and there was just no substance to it.
I did get invested in the characters at points and hoped they would accomplish their various tasks, but this novel just fell a little short for me.
I did get invested in the characters at points and hoped they would accomplish their various tasks, but this novel just fell a little short for me.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Torture, Antisemitism
Slightly predictable but all in all, quite good. It gets better as you get along.
adventurous
emotional
informative
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
You could take the Chernobyl stuff out of this book and nothing would change. This is not sci-fi. This book is entirely about family drama and teen girl angst. It does that stuff well but if you're like me and wanted a clever time travel story centered around Chernobyl you will be extremely disappointed.
I really deeply enjoyed this one, it has all my favorite things: accurate and non-boring physics, women in science, healing from generational trauma, learning about history, and time travel. Was it a totally hole-less plot upon reflection? Not completely, but the characters were so compelling and I enjoyed the ride enough that I would absolutely recommend this. Particularly for people who enjoyed books like the Alice Network or the Calculating Stars.
✨ Review ✨ Atomic Anna by Rachel Barenbaum
This is one of my FAVORITE books I've read so far this year!
Atomic Anna centers three generations of women - Anna, her daughter Molly, and Molly's daughter Raisa - across the 20th century. From the 1910s to the 1990s, these women struggle with the meaning of family and their obligations to society as they strive to prioritize their passions (science / comics / math & engineering). When Anna discovers a mechanism to time travel, she strives to right the wrongs of her life while keeping her family safe across the century.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Historical Fiction, Family Drama
Location: USSR, Philadelphia, Berlin, Chernobyl
Pub Date: April 5, 2022
Barenbaum delivers EVERYTHING I love best in historical fiction -- badass women, multiple timelines (in this case, via time travel), global historical context (WWII, Cold War, Chernobyl, and migrant communities in the U.S.). The book weaves in ethical discussions of atomic energy, violence and revenge, and the potential dangers of scientific research alongside questions of family and parenting, gender roles, and more. I loved that it tackled WWII and the Cold War through a Soviet perspective, and through a Russian Jewish woman who certainly wasn't a Soviet diehard - this provided a fascinating, thought-provoking take on these global political conflicts from the view of a marginalized scientist.
I was hooked from the first pages of the prologue and could barely put this book down. She so brilliantly uses time travel to create a nonlinear timeline where characters cross paths and shape each other's lives in surprising ways throughout the book. While I've read books where time travel is more science-based than magic-based, this world of time travel comes with many limitations, which ramped up the intensity of the suspense within.
VERY VAGUE SPOILER BELOW....
.
.
I was a little disappointed in the ending of the book. Everything seemed tied up a little too seamlessly, and I'd have loved for a little more nuance and complexity here.
.
.
Read this if you like:
⭕️ Time-travel stories, historical fiction of the 20th century
⭕️ Badass women in STEM
⭕️ Complex multi-generational family dramas
Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and #netgalley for a digital and physical copy of this book!
This is one of my FAVORITE books I've read so far this year!
Atomic Anna centers three generations of women - Anna, her daughter Molly, and Molly's daughter Raisa - across the 20th century. From the 1910s to the 1990s, these women struggle with the meaning of family and their obligations to society as they strive to prioritize their passions (science / comics / math & engineering). When Anna discovers a mechanism to time travel, she strives to right the wrongs of her life while keeping her family safe across the century.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Historical Fiction, Family Drama
Location: USSR, Philadelphia, Berlin, Chernobyl
Pub Date: April 5, 2022
Barenbaum delivers EVERYTHING I love best in historical fiction -- badass women, multiple timelines (in this case, via time travel), global historical context (WWII, Cold War, Chernobyl, and migrant communities in the U.S.). The book weaves in ethical discussions of atomic energy, violence and revenge, and the potential dangers of scientific research alongside questions of family and parenting, gender roles, and more. I loved that it tackled WWII and the Cold War through a Soviet perspective, and through a Russian Jewish woman who certainly wasn't a Soviet diehard - this provided a fascinating, thought-provoking take on these global political conflicts from the view of a marginalized scientist.
I was hooked from the first pages of the prologue and could barely put this book down. She so brilliantly uses time travel to create a nonlinear timeline where characters cross paths and shape each other's lives in surprising ways throughout the book. While I've read books where time travel is more science-based than magic-based, this world of time travel comes with many limitations, which ramped up the intensity of the suspense within.
VERY VAGUE SPOILER BELOW....
.
.
I was a little disappointed in the ending of the book. Everything seemed tied up a little too seamlessly, and I'd have loved for a little more nuance and complexity here.
.
.
Read this if you like:
⭕️ Time-travel stories, historical fiction of the 20th century
⭕️ Badass women in STEM
⭕️ Complex multi-generational family dramas
Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and #netgalley for a digital and physical copy of this book!