kenzieburns's reviews
55 reviews

I'm not usually a non-fiction reader, but this has been on my TBR for a while after hearing about it in an engineering ethics unit my senior year of college. In high school, I was also very interested in investigative journalism after writing a report on John Steinbeck (and being the editor of my school's newspaper). So this book was a great non-fiction read for me! 

I think Carreyrou did a great job of blending storytelling with relaying the facts, and was able to keep everything interesting. Was a really interesting read!

This book ripped my heart out and stomped all over it, then tore it to shreds. I was ugly crying while reading the last quarter on a plane. But it was so, so, so good. Everything, from the writing style to the characters/their development, to the little notes from Death himself throughout the book was so well done.

The premise of this book was interesting to me right from the start. Usually, World War 2 stories focus on the oppressed, not the oppressor. So right away, I was a bit wary when the main character was a German girl. But this book did something really beautiful in using WW II as a backdrop instead of a main focal point. Sure, the atrocities of Germany during that time were important to the story and the characters/their development, but this was not just a WW II story. It was a story about a girl faced with so much hardship and the people in her life who cared enough to want to make it better for her. It was a story about kindness and how hard it can be to uphold morals and human decency under a tyrannical regime. It was a story about the power of words and knowledge, and what happens when these are withheld from the masses. And it was a beautiful, heartbreaking, powerful story.

I always appreciate well-written characters, and this book had nothing but well-written characters. Each person was multi-faceted, and they each had their own development arca that were well planned and well executed. I really liked the authors use of irony to foretell the fates of the characters. At first, I thought that the combination of tragic and dramatic irony used to in Death's narration would ruin the end of the book, but I still felt the tragedy of the final fate of each character to my core (and sobbed over it). When it came down to it, the writing of the final scenes of the book was just so powerful and moving. Honestly, I think it was the deeply developed characters that made this a 5 ⭐ read for me. 

This was such a cute, light read. Very homey and heartwarming. Definitely not fine literature by any means, but still an enjoyable story and setting to get lost in. 

However, the plot felt like it had wayyyyy too much going on for one book. It just felt very "jam everything possible into one book" and therefore certain things felt rushed. I also couldn't get a good sense of the timeline; did things happen over a few days, weeks, or months?

The characters were lovable and charming. I really liked the Keela-Caz-Meep trio, it reminded me of the main trio from TJ Klune's "In the Lives of Puppets". The setting was also as much of a character as the creatures, and the beautiful descriptions really made me feel like I was on the island. Overall, very cozy and homey novel.

A fluffy, sapphic holiday romance. Not too much meat to the story, but that's fine, that's not what I was looking for. I appreciated the disability and queer  representation throughout the novel.

A heavy read, a bit slow at times but beautifully written. The prose and descriptions of setting were beautiful, and the character development was integral to much of the novel. There were times that the development was written out very explicitly, which some people may not like, but I appreciated not having to guess.

Rachel's story is equal parks heartbreaking, beautiful, courageous, and devastating. The author does NOT shy away from the ugly parts of slavery in the novel, but also writes beautiful depictions of all the different ways that freedom was found by Carribean enslaved and formerly-enslaved people. I really loved the character development Rachel went through throughout the novel as she found what freedom meant not just to her but also to her children. And the last scene of the novel was *chef's kiss* so so beautiful. 

An important history that deserves to be told of the fight for freedom, and all that it means, that ensued in the Caribbean in the wake of "emancipation".

It was a bit too prose-heavy at times, but overall a good memoir!

A sweeping exploration of the immigrants' America.