A review by romancebookaddict
La notte più lunga by Leylah Attar

5.0

Where to even start with writing a review for this book. I am never good at writing reviews especially when I loved it so much. It's easier to be negative and say the thing I didn't like. But I am not going to do either I've decided that I'm just going to show you all my favorite quotes and show you how beautiful the writing is and you can decide if you like it from that.

This book was breathtakingly beautiful, and I am glad I was able to experienced such a thought provoking story. It's a story about life, love, and picking up the pieces of your shattered heart and life after such a great loss. This will be one of those stories I will never forget.

"He'll come in when he's done. And he'll keep doing it, until one day, he doesn't need to anymore. It's what you're doing too, aren't you? Miles from home. Mourning you sister in your own way. You've got to let it run it course. Give in until it's spent and quiet, until you've learned to breathe through the loss."

"We don't always understand the things we do. We just do them and hope we'll feel better."

"The world will screw you over. It's a given. Once you accept that, it get's easier."

"Sometimes we need to be jarred out of our own reality. We base so much of ourselves on other people's perceptions of us. We live for the compliments, the approval, the applause. But what we really need is a grand, spine-chilling encounter with ourselves to believe we're freaking magical. And that's the best kind of believing, because no one can unsay it or take it away from you."

Losing someone you love tunes you in to the fragility of life-of moments and memories and music. It makes you want to embrace all the foolish, inarticulate longings that pull at your heart. It makes you want to grasp un-played notes of un-played symphonies.

Whenever Jack spoke of Lily, his entire profile softened. In those moments, his innately captivating presence was like a flame, kindled from within. For a second, I was completely jealous, because I had never lived in someone's heart like that. And I wanted to. I wanted to make someone, someday, glow like that when they thought of me.

"All we really want is to feel that we matter - that we're seen, that we're heard."

"Fear is a liar. Don't let it whisper in your ear. Turn that shit off. Do what scares you. Over and over again. And one day, your fear will become so small, you'll be able to laugh at it."

I witnessed, for the first time, how someone can radiate pure strength from a place of pure pain. Sometimes the most heroic thing we can do is fight the battle within and just emerge on the other side. Because it's not just one battle, one time. We do it over and over again, as long as we breathe, as long as we live.

The most profound, most memorable moments of life are the ones that make you feel.

I knew that whenever I thought of love, it would have a face, a name, a voice. And I would hear its heart beating from inside a tent in the wild of Africa.

I had always thought of home as a place, where you put down your roots, unpack your collection of mugs with snarky quotes, put up all the bookshelves you want, and watch the rain splash down your windows on wet, gray afternoons. But I was realizing that home was a feeling of being, of belonging a feeling that swirled through my veins every time I was with Jack.

There are moments that remain frozen in time every sound, every color, every breath, crystallized into vivid shared of memory.