Reviews

The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, Laura L. Sullivan

scienceworks's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.5

evspekkie's review

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0

keitacolada's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

kahlaelizabeth's review

challenging inspiring sad tense fast-paced

5.0

creolelitbelle's review against another edition

emotional hopeful sad tense fast-paced

4.0

Normally, I do not read books that will likely make me sad, but this memoir is a good account of one teen's experience during the Bosnian War in the early 1990s. Schools in the US taught me that the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union were only positive for Eastern Europeans, but books like this show the negative side to the history that America does not necessarily want us to know. The world promised that nothing like the Holocaust would happen again, and it did within the same century. 

Amra Sabic-El-Rayess's story gave me hope and nearly made me cry multiple times. She escaped some of the harsher realities of the war that some Bosniaks suffered, but she still struggled to survive and make a life for herself in the world thanks to the war. Maci (the cat) is a larger than life character in the memoir, and the author's note emphasizes that she was a huge impact on her family and life. My heart broke for the author when she described the sad pieces from her life during and after the war, but learning of her successes today is inspiring. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Death, Hate crime, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Islamophobia, and War

Moderate: Grief

florinereads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

izzys_internet_bookshelf's review

DNF

was good but it was just really slow

nerminabrljak's review

dark emotional informative inspiring sad medium-paced

5.0

mashyroom's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

mary00's review

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5