The art was gorgeous.

While I mistook this for the full book and was a bit disappointed, I'm still glad I read this. The art was amazing and absolutely stunning. A call back to the movie but also new.

I liked that this wasn't just the movie and incorporated elements that I assume are from the original story. It added a lot more depth.

Time to track down an ebook of the full story.

I made it through. This book was long, and dense, and not that exciting. I can't really tell you much about this, I barely remember it, only I wasn't engaged and I was zoned out most of the time I spent reading this. I wouldn't say it's awful and that no one should read it, only this certainly is not a book for me.

The writing was ok but I honestly just did not enjoy this. It's a shame, I thought I would. This author continues to be very hit or miss for me, and this is another miss.

This is the second Nancy Drew book I've read. I'm always surprised at how well written they are and how quickly I get through them. There's a reason these have been around for decades.

I didn't enjoy this mystery as much as the previous one, but other than that all my praises remain the same.

2.5

The book was decent, had some good moments and bad ones. I can't say I've retained much of what I read besides a few lines and scenes here and there. Unsure if it was because I mainly listened to it via audio and I find it hard to visualize/pay attention to or just because the ebook was boring as even when I was reading a physical copy I was not attentive.

Found my old copy and deiceded to read it. I liked it a lot more now than I did in school, and, in retrospect, I don't think my teacher understood it as we took the book very literally and thought it was stupid because of that. Now I can see the points it was trying to make and while I don't agree with all of them, nor the pretentious tone of "if you don't understand/agree with this you're the problem" I did enjoy this a lot more now upon rereading it.

I finally sat down and finished this. I think this entire arc was unnecessary. It felt rushed. The pictures are very gimmicky, were not good to any degree, and printed on full-colour pages skyrocketing the prices of the books.

To begin with, the ending is not at all satisfactory. It leaves so many open questions, and not in a good way. Secondly, it only resolves the major conflict with Caul. it leaves so many characters' fates undetermined and entire concepts untouched. One thing that annoys me so much with this expansion si that the ideas were there to write a better series, ie American Pecularidom, or even the emancipation of the Peculiardome. Who wouldn't want to read that?!

There were way too many characters here to keep track of them. If you thought The Library of Souls had a large cast of characters, think again. I think this should have been a spin-off, not a sequel, and included new characters as the main cast. Or, alternatively, Jacob and his adventure in America. Again, so many interesting concepts introduce and not used at all to their fullest potential. What bugs me the most is that instead, they opted to go the very generic route of giving everyone new powers and introducing a prophecy.

When it comes to the idea of the emancipation of the Peculiardome, that would have been amazing. It does not seem to be resolved here in the slightest. We know there are peculiar who do not want to go back to loop life, and those who are. None of this is explored at all beyond what was needed to serve for a final battle.

And again, this whole spy network across America run by Jacob's grandfather? So cool, so underused. There could easily have been two solid trilogies from these two ideas alone. One following Jacob and one with a whole new cast of characters.

Now onto some things I enjoyed. As for all of Rigg's books, this was well-written and entertaining. His writing styles read too easily and you can fly through the book. my delay in reading it was due to not caring enough to pick it up, however in the times I did read it I flew through chapters in a sitting.

Next, I like Noor a lot as a character, and as a love interest for Jacob. I've always found the Emma/Jacob dynamic unsettling and Noor is just such a sweetheart. I would have loved for this series to focus on her or to get some Noor-focused books in the future. I do wish she and Jacob got to spend more time together, as like everything their relationship felt rushed during the first two books then suddenly irrelevant near the end of the last one.

Third, I loved how it brought up how tragic a loop life is. It was something I never considered in the original books. It was kind of funny the way they acted, but seeing the unrest and realizing the toll it has on some of the Peculiar children, made me even more dissatisfied with the ending. These are people who are taken from their families at a young age and are forced to live the same day over and over again never leaving their loop and never again. It's tragic and again, a missed opportunity.

i am by no means swearing off reading new peculiar books as they come out, but I will certainly be looking to buy them cheap or loan them from a library. I still think there is a lot of p[potential in the world and hope that it gets developed and explored further.

I don't think this is the best example of Morton's work. It fell a bit short, honestly, when I compare it to the likes of [b: The Forgotten Garden|3407877|The Forgotten Garden|Kate Morton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547843777l/3407877._SY75_.jpg|3448086] and [b: The Secret Keeper|13508607|The Secret Keeper|Kate Morton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1455089196l/13508607._SY75_.jpg|19060869]. The mystery left something to be wanted. It felt watered out and thin.

From a technical perspective, this book was quite interesting. I felt like as I read I could see the technical aspects and the hints that were dropped along the way that made sure the big reveal at the end was not random or unfair to the reader. I think it helped that one of the characters was an actual mystery writer. But it was enough to make me feel like she was trying to do something different., though in the end I was let down when I learnt she was not.

This story felt different from her other works because it wasn't so much a family affair as an on-leave detective who has too much time on her hands trying to solve a closed case. I always loved the family aspect of Morton's books and how people go on long quests to try and find out little secrets of their past, but this was lacking a bit on that aspect as those still alive believed they knew what happened and the investigator was a stubborn outsider.

In the end, I found that while I did not guess the solution as I did for The Forgotten Garden, I was not in the least bit surprised. I felt she reused some plot twists and motives from her other books and the big reveal at the end was not very shocking. I wasn't dumbfounded or amazed, I just sat like thinking that it made absolute sense if you compare it to her other works and was wondering why I had not seen it coming. It made this book feel very recycled. It might be because she writes very similar novels in plot and style and there are only so many ways one can do something, but I would have liked a bit more originality to it.

Interview with author at the bottom!

I got this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I think this book was written beautifully. Hanna's attention to detail and youthfulness came out in the novel. They had a strong, loveable voice that I could hear in the back of my head I read the book. The description in this novel was amazing. Little things were described with just one extra word, the flowers were yellow, and it somehow made the book more complete. It made Hanna feel like a fully fleshed-out person living in the real world. It might seem like nothing in just one small example, but when many are strung together they paint an amazing picture. The author managed to hit the sweet spot with the description. It was just a bit more than I'm used to, but not enough to be boring or to take away from the story.

There wasn't much in the way of the plot. It was a survival story about families and struggles and ties. I found it slow at some points for there wasn't much action. Still, I never completely lost interest in this novel, which was surprising as having it on my laptop meant I sometimes when a while without reading it and I wasn't carrying it around with me everywhere as I do with paper copies of books. This book always drew me back in.

The family feeling in the book was very present. I felt connected to all the characters and none of the relationships felt forced or unnatural. My hopes and desires were with them as I read. I was entirely captivated by all their dynamics and their necessity to stay together and I felt as sad as Hanna did when they all had to part ways.

I loved the aspect that it was Hanna telling tp story to her children. While knowing this from the beginning, I knew that Hanna had to live, but I still felt like she was in physical danger at times and was always concerned for those around her. It seemed a bit odd that it was told in the present tense, but it was an engaging choice as it was narrated in the first person.

Storytelling was a big aspect of this book. There was a bit where the adults were just telling stories to the children, and it was so interesting to see what they decided to tell. They talked about family mostly, and I loved how I could see what they valued and what they wanted their children to value when they could finally be free.

Interview with the author Tara Lynn Masih:

Q: What are the differences between writing short stories and a novel?
A: For me, it's a huge difference. The length of the course comes into play. I have a natural tendency to condense, as poets do, so it was a struggle for me to expand the narration. I get bored when there is too much filler in books, so I had to find a good balance between making the reader feel like they are living in Hanna's shoes, but not letting the story get too mundane for me. Still, it's a short book. Some don't like its brevity, but luckily, so far, most do.

Q: Why did you choose to write this book in the present tense?
A: That's an excellent question! The first final draft was actually in the typical past tense, but some editors complained that the action did not seem immediate. My preference has always been to write in the present. My writing flows better. But being that this was the first novel, I tried to fit it into the standard mold that editors find more acceptable. Bad idea. Go with what your strengths are. I painstakingly converted the whole manuscript back to present tense, and we got multiple offers.

Q: What do you think the ethics are of writing about historical events and figures?
A: Another wonderful question. I can't speak about ethics in general for all writers, I can only speak about what I tried to follow. First, I was inspired by a real family, the Stermers. But I did not want to "steal" their story. I believe it should mostly be left for their descendants to tell, out of respect for their trauma. So I fictionalized a whole town and family, and only borrowed impersonal events, dates, survival skills, and two small quotes. Also, in writing about the Holocaust, I did not go fully into the nightmarish atrocities that befell the Jewish population, as some other books have. But my personal feeling was that if I did, I would somehow be desecrating it.