Reviews - Where Rainbows End

2.39k reviews for:

6 days to finish this book! I read this in Santorini and it was amazing reading this story of friendship and love as I read while watching the caldera! Rosie and Alex have been best friends since they were little and throughout the book they experience life together even though being miles away. I watched the movie and it wasn't nearly as good as the book. The book had so much more detail, so much connection, a little more characters, and I could imagine all the pictures of the places the protagonists described in detail. My heart ached the entire book as I read two characters who were completely in love with each other but didn't want to tell the other for the sake of their friendship, marriages, and the distance. It gave me insight on how many things happen in life and how unhappy people can be just because they didn't say the words, "I love you."

yikestm's review against another edition

4.5

slow-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: No

The style of this book was really interesting and I didn’t really get it until the end. It’s kind of like we’re reading back through this with Rosie as she stays up all night.

michie330's review against another edition

4.0

It was a little long, but I guess since it took place over 45 years that is to be expected. One small thing I had a problem with was that the ages of the characters weren't always correct but this probably only bothers me because I am a math teacher.

samimyers's review against another edition

5.0

Rating - 5 Stars

This book gave me all kinds of feels, from the time I opened it to 486 pages, and 50 years, later. It truly was an amazing book.

Though I do advise you read this book in a short period of time to get the true effect, I have been reading this for far too long in short periods and it didn't give me the full effect. But goodness now that I have finished I truly realize how amazing this book was.

Recommend 100%.

laurpar's review against another edition

3.0

Remember my post about One Day? This book has pretty much the exact same plot, but it takes itself a little less seriously. Rosie and Alex have been best friends since primary school, and as they’ve grown up, their friendship, and love for each other, has only grown stronger. Unfortunately, like in One Day, the two are too afraid to share their feelings, and something always seems to be in the way. Lost chances, accidents, and mistakes make the story a bit sad and remorseful, but Ahern’s humorous voice made the tone of the book still rather uplifting. I felt myself genuinely empathizing with Rosie, crying over her losses and proud of her accomplishments, getting sick from the things that were sometimes thrown in her path. One of my favorite quotations is “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” This book is the embodiment of that quotation; watching Rosie and Alex’s dreams begin to take form as children, witnessing them graduating, filled with so much hope for the future, and being with them through all the set-backs and disappointments thrown their way, it really made me think about what my own future has in store.

The story was written in epistolary form (that’s my new vocabulary word of the day!), told through e-mails, letters, chatroom conversations, IM’s, and cards. This form of writing surprisingly covered quite a bit of time, and switching from one media to another helped keep my interest - had the book just consisted of one email after another, I would have been very, very bored. While reading the book, this form of writing made sense, but as you can imagine, it made the audio book a bit difficult to listen to: hearing the narrator pronounce every ‘ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha’ was more than a bit awkward.

Of course, I did have some complaints: Rosie’s lack of a backbone through the majority of the book got to be very annoying, very fast. The obvious direction in which the storyline was going also made me frustrated; I just wanted to push Alex and Rosie together at times. Altogether, though, this book was cute and light-hearted, like all of Cecelia Ahern’s books, but without the hint of the supernatural that are usually characteristic of her work.