novelinsights 's review for:

The Book of Love by Kelly Link
5.0
adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

 This was such a lovely world of a book. It is very character-led, *weird* contemporary fantasy that drops you (and the cast of characters) into a disorienting situation with a secret explanation that only unspools over time. This is not a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat type of book, and as such, it won't appeal to everybody. Regardless, I found myself infected by it. I read a lot and set myself fairly challenging reading goals every year; as such, I sometimes find myself glancing at page counts, tracking how quickly I'm getting through one story so I can move on to the next. I don't particularly like that I do this, but it happens unless I'm really enjoying a story. It didn't happen with this. This book is very long--628 pages, yes, but also, they were 628 full pages. I took over twice as long to read this as I would the average book of its size. Yet I didn't feel rushed. I didn't even want to rush. I simply accepted that, if this book was going to throw off my reading, I was just going to have to deal with it, because I was having fun and I wanted to enjoy it.
This book delves into the minds and backstories of most of its ensemble cast of characters to create a fully realized world--a world that I've now spent 20 days living in. It feels almost strange to think that when I pick up a book for my nightly reading, I'm going to have to go somewhere else.