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A review by mandersm
The Imperfects by Amy Meyerson
4.0
3.5 stars
The Imperfects is about a family who, upon the death of their grandmother, inherits a large diamond which turns out to be a missing Austrian heirloom. This novel had so much promise. The plot was super intriguing, there were ties to World War II, and there was some truth to it — as the author explains at the end, this diamond is real and is missing. But the execution of this novel fell flat.
So much could have been done to make this an intriguing novel of historical fiction with a dual timeline that actually could have been worked. I often dislike the dual timeline idea, as the present day plot is often dull and not needed, but here, with the diamond as a motivating factor, it could have been really cool. But instead the novel is bogged down in drama among the family members that I really didn’t take an interest in, and the super cool historical aspects were left to obscurity as the main characters don’t even get so much as a diary to find out what really happened to their grandmother. This means that readers don’t know much of it either.
The ending is also a real dud. I won’t spoil what ends up happening, but it left me feeling like the rest of the novel had been for nothing. I wanted to know what happened, and this was a quick read, but what readers end up actually getting isn’t nearly what it could have been.
The Imperfects is about a family who, upon the death of their grandmother, inherits a large diamond which turns out to be a missing Austrian heirloom. This novel had so much promise. The plot was super intriguing, there were ties to World War II, and there was some truth to it — as the author explains at the end, this diamond is real and is missing. But the execution of this novel fell flat.
So much could have been done to make this an intriguing novel of historical fiction with a dual timeline that actually could have been worked. I often dislike the dual timeline idea, as the present day plot is often dull and not needed, but here, with the diamond as a motivating factor, it could have been really cool. But instead the novel is bogged down in drama among the family members that I really didn’t take an interest in, and the super cool historical aspects were left to obscurity as the main characters don’t even get so much as a diary to find out what really happened to their grandmother. This means that readers don’t know much of it either.
The ending is also a real dud. I won’t spoil what ends up happening, but it left me feeling like the rest of the novel had been for nothing. I wanted to know what happened, and this was a quick read, but what readers end up actually getting isn’t nearly what it could have been.