I really enjoyed this. It's such a heartbreaking story and it pulled at my emotions constantly. If I hadn't been reading this at work, I would have been in tears for the second half of the book.

The emotion was fantastic. That was really the strong point of the book for me. When Wingate wanted to make you cry, she made you cry. It was sad, but in a way that felt earned. These characters had such full lives that I wanted to feel something for the pain they went through.

I didn't love the romance. It happened in the present day portions of the book and it didn't work for me. It was such a small part of the story and so underdeveloped, but also so obvious. If it was going to be included, I wish it'd had more screen time in order to be fully developed. It felt like a cheap add on that took away from the important parts of the story. Plus it added an uncomfortable cheating element to the story that I didn't enjoy.

I also struggled a little with the dual perspective. They were both really well done, but the switching often felt jarring to me. Like I always wanted to stay with the one I was reading and having to alternate felt like an interruption. But I was always able to sink into the characters' perspectives eventually. The transition itself just wasn't as smooth as I would have preferred.

This made me want to read more nonfiction on the subject, to hear what the real children went through. The kidnapping and selling of children is so horrifying and everything in this book felt so real, I just want to learn more. I had known in general that this was a thing, but not in the details that Wingate shared here. It's different hearing the specifics. She did such a fantastic job weaving the historical details into her fictional story. I also greatly appreciate the list of titles at the end and I'll be doing more research on those.

I would highly recommend this if you like tear jerkers, historical fiction, and dual perspectives. A really well done, well written that hit all the right notes for me.