A review by bookedbymadeline
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

adventurous dark emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

The first part pulled me in, but afterwards it slowed down a bit until finally picking up again around 100 pages in.

The novel is split into parts that span several years with POVs mostly from Marie-Laure and Werner but we get some chapters from other characters occasionally too. I really enjoyed the switching POVs and the sort of timeline split of before/after the siege of Saint-Malo!

Some of Werner’s chapters were a little overly descriptive for my taste. Like I didn’t need a whole paragraph explaining a math equation.

I really liked the short chapters, it helped with reading it in spare moments and being motivated to pick it up more especially considering how long it is. Personally I don’t think it needed to be 500+ pages, any historical fiction over 400 pages is doing too much 😅

The characters were well developed and the writing overall was atmospheric, making me feel like I was there witnessing everything in front of me.

Now aside from the length and dragging pace at times, this was shaping up to be an amazing novel, at least 5 stars, until
the rape scene in the final 40 pages, which was totally was unnecessary (but the author is a man so what do you expect). I know it’s historically accurate and it happened to many women during the war, but there are ways to write it that imply it rather than describe it if the author really wanted to include that detail. Also we barely hear from Jutta or Frau Elena for most of the book BUT NOW we hear from them and this is what we get? Totally unnecessary. It would’ve made more sense if we had been getting Jutta’s perspective the whole time as well, if the authors goal was truly to show all the sufferings of the war, including the Germans themselves.

It felt like a disconnected, out of pocket scene just for the sake of having a rape scene. Just because it’s historically accurate does not mean it’s necessary or should be put into the story, and again, there are better ways to write it if you feel it’s a needed addition 🙃 The story was basically done- it’s serves ZERO purpose to the plot or Jutta’s character- truly pointless and typical “men writing women”

It was a great book otherwise but that scene ruined it and I’m dropping down my rating because of that absolute nonsense. Also as someone who has read a lot of world war 2 historical fiction novels, this one isn’t all that special story-wise. The writing was pretty good but adds nothing to the genre (in my opinion) because it’s really just another “wow what horrible things happening to this young girl but she’s being so brave” and “you know guys, what if not all Nazis were bad, like this young soldier here.”

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