forevermorepages's Reviews (811)

I think I loved this more the second read through. Absolutely beautiful.

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I won't do a full review of this one, mostly because I just don't have the time nor energy, but I really enjoyed this, especially as someone who adores art and art history! I highly recommend it!

The Orphan's Tale is a sweet story about friendship and love set during the time of the Holocaust in Germany. It's about a female aerialist in the circus who is Jewish and a young woman who comes to the circus after saving a Jewish baby. The two and the baby develop a close bond as they hide from the Nazis. It's a very beautiful story that I would definitely recommend. I even cried at the end, which doesn't happen too often!

I think ultimately the only thing I didn't like was the insta-love. Noa and Luc fall in love so quickly and while I respect that that is realistic in some cases, it felt rushed to me considering the pacing of the story. I also had a few qualms with how contrived the ending felt (literally it was the only way to successfully end the novel without having it be messy), but I was so swept up with emotions that I didn't end up minding it as much as I otherwise would have!

Ultimately, I highly recommend this! Great book! Really sad! Solid read! If you're looking for a WWII book that's not like other WWII books, I'd give this one a shot!

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Wow that shouldn't have been allowed to make me cry the way it did at the end, holy shit.

Review to come probably tonight so look out for that! I'll hopefully do a little one on here once I...get it together haha

-Book Hugger

That ending holy cow

To be clear, I don't think this book is problematic or that the questioning rep is bad, which I've seen a few reviews suggest. Coming from someone who spent quite a bit of time questioning her sexuality, I understood Nandan greatly and I think it's important to represent internalized homophobia, something I still struggle with every single day. The repulsion Nandan feels about being queer, gay, bi, whatever label he hasn't discovered yet, isn't because he hates gay people or thinks they're disgusting, it's because he thinks he's disgusting.

I do wish this book concluded more in the end, maybe discussed how Nandan pushed Dave around so much, maybe unpacked his feelings of internalized homophobia and personal discovery. I wish his relationship with Dave hadn't been rushed in the beginning and hadn't happened so quickly. However, that could be realistic for some people!

Ultimately, I think this is an important and valuable book and maybe it would have been important for me a few years ago! I just think that the writing style (messy, complicated), the amount of characters (WAY too many), and the pacing let it down. It had the opportunity to discuss internalized homophobia, to discuss what it means to question your sexuality, what it means to come out when you're not ready, what it means to be outed (which was brushed over in a way and I don't fully appreciate that), and what it means to be queer and not know what label to use.

This book isn't a failure; it just isn't done as well as I had hoped. But that's just me! I wouldn't persuade anyone not to read this book; I just didn't like it myself.

-Book Hugger

well shit that was good um i'm gonna go like freak out for a bit

me: *reads this book for the book that makes you smile prompt of reading rush*
me: *finishing it and trying not to cry*
me: ah yes, i completed this challenge.

anyway, hugs and kisses to matthew only tonight, goodnight, folks

-book hugger

I feel broken, not sure I'll ever feel whole again. There's a helplessness Celeste Ng engenders at the end of her books; you just can't help but feel like you want to fix every character's mess once the book is ended and you've closed it. But you can't because she didn't write them to be fixed.

I'll make it known that I don't think this is a bad book, it's more that I couldn't really connect to the story or the characters and I think it mostly just reminded me why I struggle to read middle-grade. It's not objectively bad, in fact, if I were ten years younger, I probably would have adored this; just now, I look for more from the books I read! Now you're probably wondering why on earth I read this if I knew I wasn't going to enjoy it, but to be honest, I kind of thought I would. Roshani Chokshi is one of my favorite authors and I love(d?) Rick Riordan's books, so I figured her writing one of the Riordan Presents mythology books would be wonderful! And frankly, the most wonderful thing about this book was the mythology.

But anyway, another thing is that I think if I read this in a physical copy instead of an ebook on my phone, I wouldn't have found it as boring (I have a weird thing about ready fantasy as an ebook).

-Book Hugger

I'm really glad to have read this if not for the beautiful storyline, but for the history, especially as it pertains to women.

Definitely recommend!

(And thus concludes my participation in the Asian Readathon!)

-Book Hugger