922 reviews for:

The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil

4.25 AVERAGE

ewill's review against another edition

3.0

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read

ashalah's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional inspiring medium-paced

dolphinlvr0920's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

sdudek12's review against another edition

3.0

challenging emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

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I think I did myself a disservice by listening to this on audio. I own the physical copy and I was extremely excited about this memoir when I first heard about it. The book time jumps quite a bit and it's very easy to lose track of where Clemantine is within the story while listening on audio. I don't tend to reread memoirs often, but I think I will read this again using my physical copy so I can fully understand, process, and appreciate the author's story.

katelyl's review against another edition

2.0

challenging emotional inspiring reflective tense slow-paced

libraryjen's review against another edition

3.5

challenging emotional informative sad medium-paced

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3.5 stars

Obviously, the real life experiences of Ms. Wamariya are not what I'm rating, it's the writing itself. The experiences of the author and her sister were horrific and interesting and inspiring, but the book itself was sometimes confusing and jumped around too much to easily follow. Still, it's a story that needs to be told and I'm grateful to the author for writing the book and telling her story. I'm grateful that I got to read it.

emherrick's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

snowreads1's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

colo's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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Clemantine is a very unlikable person but who am I to judge, you know? I’m not the one who went through a genocide and had to migrate across seven African countries alongside her sister, her sister’s abusive husband, and play mother to her sister’s kids…. 

I always find writing reviews on real stories hard because how can you possibly critiques another person’s real life journey? What are you going to say? 

aboxer6490's review against another edition

5.0

emotional informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced