The sandcastle girls

I'm giving this book 4 stars because I think it tells an important story that people should know, but frankly that story is not well-served by the book's characters.

As a Jew, I have been bombarded from childhood with information about the loss of 6 million of my people during the Holocaust. But until I read this novel, I knew next to nothing about a similar genocide that took place 30 years earlier of 1.5 million Armenians. The parallels with the Holocaust are eerily similar - the demonization of the Jews and the Armenians by the Germans and the Turks, the initial denial that the homeland they had been loyal to for generations would turn on them - so how could I not be moved and horrified?

Unfortunately the love story that drives much of the narrative is underdeveloped, and the portions that are narrated by the author's stand-in, a middle-aged author discovering her family's dark history, would have benefited from more dramatic tension.

Although the book has its weaknesses, I'm very glad I read it, and give credit to Bohjalian for shedding light on a tragic piece of history that obviously has much personal resonance for him.