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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
holy shit. this book is phenomenal. the book is divided into two parts. part one is the four main characters growing up in the ussr. this section is lovely, filled with hope and teenage rebellion. part two deals with the main character coming back to russia after living in america for 20 years. it's heartbreaking and the way the author describes grief and loss? absolutely insane. i cried, laughed, and fell in love with four fictional russians. i cannot recommend this book enough.
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Oh, this is so beautiful. It’s about grief and it really understands that grief is painful because it is born of and lives through love. It has such real, vivid, flawed characters that the text loves dearly. I listened to the audiobook, which I definitely recommend because it pronounces all the Russian words and names correctly so you don’t have to try to figure out how they’d sound while you’re reading.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Miscarriage
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Violence, Grief, War
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-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
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is stunning. I am so grateful to my friend Ana for recommending and buying this for me. The prose is so beautiful, and the author has written about loss of all sorts so palpably. This book has me feeling incredibly tender.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion
Moderate: Rape
DNF (did not finish) and stopped at 25%
I appreciated snippets of Russian life in the 1980s. Descriptions of the food, family, friends, reminiscing on hard times of the war and the toughness of the soviet experience. The "realness" of it, I loved. HOWEVER! I had to stop because of the complete unnecessary use of crude/vulgar language of each others bodies and obsession of sex. It was gratuitous, distracting and pulled me out of the story. A quarter of the way through and the author probably used the words: "nipples", "tits", "pubic hair" like 100 times. It did not need to be added for this story to be good and for what the author was trying to evoke. Also nothing was really happening plot-wise. Just two teenage girls coming-of-age. I think this is an example of why literary fiction doesn't suit me.
I appreciated snippets of Russian life in the 1980s. Descriptions of the food, family, friends, reminiscing on hard times of the war and the toughness of the soviet experience. The "realness" of it, I loved. HOWEVER! I had to stop because of the complete unnecessary use of crude/vulgar language of each others bodies and obsession of sex. It was gratuitous, distracting and pulled me out of the story. A quarter of the way through and the author probably used the words: "nipples", "tits", "pubic hair" like 100 times. It did not need to be added for this story to be good and for what the author was trying to evoke. Also nothing was really happening plot-wise. Just two teenage girls coming-of-age. I think this is an example of why literary fiction doesn't suit me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Sexual content
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced