felcharbonneau 's review for:

West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

5.0

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This book gives you the raw human perspective of a very hard time to be alive and brings you through the journey of how quickly life can change, and how experiences can impact you deeply even if they were short lived. There’s a lot of really powerful messages carried through the book, the obvious one of how incredible animals truly are. The giraffe’s impact so many people along their journey and teach the humans the value of truth, trust, and love. This book is referred to as “slow” but I feel it brings you into the true human experience of the drawn out journey and makes it feel very authentic. You experience some really dark moments briefly that pull you right into some of the realities of that era such as the racism that ran deep. You feel the losses and the hope and the beauty in opportunity to share your story ( or the choice not to). Truly a beautiful story!