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timeywriter 's review for:
The Shadow Land
by Elizabeth Kostova
I wish I had loved this as much as I do The Historian, another novel by this author. Yet, as much potential as this novel had in the beginning, I feel that it fell short of its potential. Instead, what happened in nearly 500 pages, could have easily happened in half that with less running around.
Alexandra comes to Bulgaria to teach and at the entrance of a hotel she runs into a family who leaves behind a bag. Taking it upon herself, especially when she finds that there is an urn filled with ashes in the bag, Alexandra seeks out the family to return their property. Along the way she is assisted by a taxi driver, Bobby, who helps her drive all across Bulgaria in order to find the owners of the urn. Honestly, it was a little cheesy buddy road trip story and then a dog was added in which made it just even more so. I thought there would be a greater mystery too, though I unfortunately figured out the plot twist about halfway through. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved that there was no romantic interest between Bobby and Alexandra, but I also hated that it had to come through one of them being gay in order to kibosh the heteronormative. I just felt like all of the relationships were a little forced, especially considering that all of the events took place within a week. And then all of this leads up to one gigantic climatic scene that takes two seconds to execute into nothingness.
While I had high hopes for this book, I even loved the bit about stray doing being vicious as it so reminded me of being in Romania myself, it still puttered away at the end. If it had been shorter and perhaps got to the purpose of the story quicker, then it would have carried me along better. But the flow of it was just too long and not enough at the same time.
Alexandra comes to Bulgaria to teach and at the entrance of a hotel she runs into a family who leaves behind a bag. Taking it upon herself, especially when she finds that there is an urn filled with ashes in the bag, Alexandra seeks out the family to return their property. Along the way she is assisted by a taxi driver, Bobby, who helps her drive all across Bulgaria in order to find the owners of the urn. Honestly, it was a little cheesy buddy road trip story and then a dog was added in which made it just even more so. I thought there would be a greater mystery too, though I unfortunately figured out the plot twist about halfway through. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved that there was no romantic interest between Bobby and Alexandra, but I also hated that it had to come through one of them being gay in order to kibosh the heteronormative. I just felt like all of the relationships were a little forced, especially considering that all of the events took place within a week. And then all of this leads up to one gigantic climatic scene that takes two seconds to execute into nothingness.
While I had high hopes for this book, I even loved the bit about stray doing being vicious as it so reminded me of being in Romania myself, it still puttered away at the end. If it had been shorter and perhaps got to the purpose of the story quicker, then it would have carried me along better. But the flow of it was just too long and not enough at the same time.