A review by emybooksandcoffee
Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende

3.0

This book made me want to learn. I wanted to know more about Chile's dictatorship and it certainly taught me things (some of them I regret learning, they were so brutal and chilling, worse than any horror movie scenario). It was certainly educational - the censorship, brutality, mercilessness and the pointless violence in the middle of the military regime rang awfully true and were the peak of the books' essence. I guess it deserves a higher rating, but I'm afraid I couldn't connect with the characters as much as I wanted. It started off almost perfectly, I loved the introduction into the characters' backstories and thoughts but my main complaint is that whenever the story became interesting and started moving, Allende would start rambling about things that happened ages ago to the characters and fusing on with their inner thoughts and it would... put me off of what was happening right now. It was anticlimatic I guess. And it was going on all the time. No doubt these things were crucial to the current plot but you can't just leave important stuff on a cliffhanger like this. Complaints aside, the ending was such a flowless mix of bittersweet, hopeful, realistic and most tangible prose with careful, sensitive and full of concern for the characters writing. Such an amazing ending, one of the best I have read.