Previous rating - 5 stars

2025 review:

This was an interesting re-read, and I’m surprised my rating has dropped this low. 

Part One of the book was definitely still 5 stars for me. I felt deeply connected to Leila, and her story was so interesting to read. 

However, when the perspective shifted to her friends in Part Two, I lost that sense of connection, and found it difficult to care about the characters. I think a lot of this was due to the distanced writing style, which made all of the events and characters seem very removed. From feeling immersed in Leila’s story in Part One, suddenly it was as if I was watching the characters through a screen, rather than living their lives alongside them. 

I also thought that it was really uncomfortable towards the end when Sinan thought he should have asked Leila to stay in Van and marry him when they were kids. It was obviously meant to be a romantically tragic moment, ‘missed loves’ and all that, but to me it stank of him never really knowing her as a person. It was so clear that Leila never wanted to stay in Van, and that it would be bad for her if she did, so SURELY in his 20-years of knowing her in Istanbul, plus all the years before living with her IN Van, that idea would have got through to him? So selfish to only think about himself in that moment. 

Then right at the end we have a chapter from the perspective of Leila’s ‘soul’, in the same way we heard from her when her brain was shutting down. To me, this completely negated the use of the countdown earlier in the book – what was the point of it if she remained conscious beyond the end of that countdown?? It also made it really unclear what point Shafak was trying to make about consciousness. The countdown made it seem like Leila’s brain cells being active was the thing keeping her conscious, but the soul perspective at the end ignored that established fact – and not in a conversational/point of the book way, more in a plot hole type way. It really took a lot of the meaning out of the book for me. 

So, overall, I wish I’d just read Part One and left it at that. Part Two and the ending really did nothing for me, and I struggled to grasp the points Shafak was trying to make apart from ‘friendship good’.