Welcome to another First Impression Friday. This is one of those new fan-dangled books you read with your ears! Fancy pants! In case this is your first time reading a FIF post, here’s the rundown:
• Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.
• Did you think you’d love and ended up hating it? Or did you think you’d hate it and wound up loving it? Or were you exactly right?
• Link back to Storeys of Stories so I can enjoy reading all the First Impression Fridays out there!
From Goodreads:
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
I generally don’t read historical fiction, but I’ve heard so many good things about this book, I just couldn’t ignore it any longer.
The first few pages pulled me right in, showing me some characters and few interesting things about those characters, and then slowly giving out the additional info I’m looking for.
The character names are kind of odd and I’m having a bit of an issue keeping everyone straight, but that’s pretty common for me when I’m starting something new.
I’m predicting a 4-star read on this one.
I picked this book up around the same time that I picked up “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah. I read both of them as fast as I could, because I couldn’t put them down. I passed them on to my mom, and she, too, loved them. She ended up liking “All the Light We Cannot See” more than “The Nightingale,” but she highly recommends them to anybody who comes through the library where she works.
Sounds good and beautiful cover. I’ve somehow ended up with quite a few historical fiction set in the WWII era.
This is on my TBR too! My brother’s gf got it for me for Christmas, so I am eager to get to it sooner rather than later. I can’t wait to see what you end up thinking about it!
I’m so torn on this book, because the cover is so pretty but I usually don’t read WW2 historical fiction! I look forward to seeing your thoughts!
I don’t usually read historical fiction, either. So far, it’s quite good. The protags are interesting, and there’s an antagonist who’s REALLY interesting.
I have trouble keeping characters straight too! Especially if there are lots of them with weird names! I hope you continue to like the book!
So I am not the only one forgetting the character’s names once I shut the book????
Nope!!
I’m not sure how I missed this post!
I’m really looking forward to seeing what you think of this book. I read it a while ago and I gave it 3/5 stars so I’m not sure whether I was being overly harsh haha.
I tried this one a while back and couldn’t get into it even though I normally really enjoy historical fiction.