While I’ve love a couple other Isabel Allende books, this one unfortunately wasn’t my favorite. I felt pretty disconnected from Violeta, our narrator. The potential of a book about a lifespan from pandemic to pandemic was really intriguing to me, but the pacing was just too slow considering the wide timeline. There was such a focus on other characters and on an unnamed country instead of Violeta herself that even though she was narrating, I didn’t connect with her. She went through so much, but without much emotion. Despite not loving this book, I’ll definitely still read Allende books in the future.

Thanks so much to Ballantine for the copy of this book!