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A review by preciouslittleingenue
The Ghosts of Rose Hill by R.M. Romero
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Finished this in pretty much one sitting. It went very fast and the writing was not my favorite. I feel like I could take a shot every time the author used “like a fist” as a metaphor and gotten pretty wasted. This was very obviously a YA novel so I’ll blame it’s simplicity on that.
The thematic metaphors were very strong. I was VERY struck by the graveyard of children’s shoes in the Black House. Super deliberate Holocaust reference that wasn’t too heavy handed. Even just the fact that Wasserman was German preying on a Jewish cemetery. You don’t need to squint to see the parallel but it’s not beating me over the head either. My favorite culmination of these parallels was Ilana’s “my people will always outlive you.” Because she doesn’t just mean her descendants will last longer than his single lifetime. She means every violent act against her people, every attempt to eliminate the Jews…has always and will always fail. They will outlive every attempt to remove them as a people from the world. I found that really beautiful.
It was such a brief work that I didn’t really feel the love connection between Ilana and Benjamin, but they’re also only sixteen. I don’t know, I just wasn’t that devastated when they were separated forever by his crossing over. But at the end of the day, the crafting of the narrative and it’s parallels was pretty expert, even if language and characterization was not. This was a great quick/short read for me to use to desperately reach my 2022 reading goal as December rapidly approaches.
OH. EDIT. Because I forgot to mention how much I loathed the audiobook narrator. Her German accent was actually painful to sit through. And her delivery of certain phrases was so cringeworthy. Maybe I’d have cared more about the characters and felt more connection between them if she wasn’t so awful.
The thematic metaphors were very strong. I was VERY struck by the graveyard of children’s shoes in the Black House. Super deliberate Holocaust reference that wasn’t too heavy handed. Even just the fact that Wasserman was German preying on a Jewish cemetery. You don’t need to squint to see the parallel but it’s not beating me over the head either. My favorite culmination of these parallels was Ilana’s “my people will always outlive you.” Because she doesn’t just mean her descendants will last longer than his single lifetime. She means every violent act against her people, every attempt to eliminate the Jews…has always and will always fail. They will outlive every attempt to remove them as a people from the world. I found that really beautiful.
It was such a brief work that I didn’t really feel the love connection between Ilana and Benjamin, but they’re also only sixteen. I don’t know, I just wasn’t that devastated when they were separated forever by his crossing over. But at the end of the day, the crafting of the narrative and it’s parallels was pretty expert, even if language and characterization was not. This was a great quick/short read for me to use to desperately reach my 2022 reading goal as December rapidly approaches.
OH. EDIT. Because I forgot to mention how much I loathed the audiobook narrator. Her German accent was actually painful to sit through. And her delivery of certain phrases was so cringeworthy. Maybe I’d have cared more about the characters and felt more connection between them if she wasn’t so awful.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Antisemitism, Child death, War, and Genocide