A review by jayisreading
The Silence of Scheherazade by Defne Suman

emotional reflective slow-paced

3.5

For me, this book is one of those books that I need to have read while in the right mindset. Unfortunately, I was not in that mindset to fully appreciate this book, so the reading experience ended up being a grueling one. I really wish it wasn’t the case because the writing was beautiful— And that’s a positive thing I can say, which is that Göksel delivered lyricism and emotion phenomenally. It was also a fascinating exploration of a part of Turkish history that I knew nothing about (though, that said, I knew very little about it to begin with). 

I’m usually okay with books that are slow-paced, time jumps, and/or a huge cast of characters. If what I wrote sounds appealing, then it might be worth checking out this book. For me, the book ended up being too slow, so I kept putting it down (and, again, I really think it’s because I wasn’t in the right mindset). As a result, I frequently forgot what happened and who the characters were (and there were so many). This is a book you need to read in chunks, otherwise, you’ll quickly lose track of what’s happening. I think my more “objective” critique that isn’t a “it’s not you, it’s me” one is that the time jumps made the story difficult to follow at times; more so because I kept putting the book down. It all starts coming together towards the end, but I’m not sure it was worth the slog. 
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