Jennifer

All this book made me want to do is to learn Spanish.

Loved the narrative until the end when Skloot made it about her. NEWSFLASH SKLOOT NOT ABOUT YOU! Way to ruin the message you were trying to send, you self-indulgent writer.

Despite going in knowing this book is about kids with cancer (read: cliche!), the story touched parts of my soul I didn't even know I had. I actually cried (I never cry over books...ever) and will forever be surprised at how deeply this book affected me.

unlikable characters, intriguing until the end. Seems like it would be an entertaining movie. I definitely wouldn't say this is the best story ever, but entertaining for sure. Maybe a solid Lifetime movie.

I come from a secular Jewish background and have read other fiction and nonfiction books about Orthodox Judaism before. This book approaches Orthodox Judaism from a different perspective than I am used to, so I found it difficult to sympathize or understand where Leah was coming from. Her world view is probably almost completely opposite of mine. This story really opened my eyes to a new perspective of Judaism that I had not encountered before. I also had not ever read a book from an Orthodox man's perspective or an Orthodox's child's, so I learned a lot from that as well. It was refreshing to learn about Orthodox Judaism from a noncritical point-of-view, so for that I am grateful. I look forward to seeing what else Naomi Ragen has to offer in the future.

Couldn't finish. Insufferable snob. I could relate to her perfectionist tendencies but she made herself sound so unrelatable. I was about 80 pages from finishing and I couldn't do it. It was like torture. She really yada yada yada-ed over her alcoholism and quitting drinking. Irritating woman.

Set after the Russo-Swedish War (no, I hadn't heard of this war before), Jean Michael “Mickel” Cardell, an armless watchman, discovers a limbless, dead body in a river. Cecil Winge is a lawyer consulted to help the police with this mysterious body. Winge is not-so-secretly dying of consumption. This is just the first part of the book. Overall, the descriptions are brutal and violent yet still entertaining enough to want to find out what happens. I learned a great deal about the underbelly of Sweden during the late 1790s, perhaps even more than I bargained for.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC.

I learned a lot! Great book to have in a kids collection

This book is trash. I got 19% into it and couldn't bear it any longer. What a douche of a woman. How condescending and privileged. No thanks. NEXT!

This story follows two timelines: one around 1957 featuring Naoko and Hajime's story and one more recently featuring a young woman, Tori, and her dying father. It is written eloquently and is very atmospheric. I felt so terrible for Naoko's journey and I felt bad for Tori's dying father. I did, however, lose interest about halfway through. I did not find the young woman figuring out her father's past plot particularly interesting. Although I appreciate a story line about the hardships of biracial Asian/White babies, as a Japanese and white biracial person, I still wasn't taken by this plot. I wanted to like this more but I just couldn't get into it. I appreciated Tori's genealogical search, but still didn't care to finish this book. I can't put my finger on why exactly, but it just didn't do it for me. Sorry!

Fell asleep halfway through and don't care enough about the plot or the characters to continue