I dove into this book with both feet after I finished the Unforgettable Life of Addie LaRue. I loved the authors ability to tell a story and weave a narrative. The characters are so complex but also relatable, people I would want to grab a drink with.

And this book does not disappoint, it has all of the great story telling with Addie LaRue but it a totally different world. This book definitely fits more in the fantasy genre and has a lot more magic but is still relatable in some way. Like I could imagine some of the people I know being from another version of my world.

Can you give a book more then 5 stars because this book deserves it? As with the other books I have ready by Kate Quinn, I was immediately sucked in and could not put it down. I found myself taking every spare moment I could find to just finish one more chapter because I needed to know what happened next!

Quinn employs the format of writing in the "present" while building up the past to give her reader the background information they need. Like the code in the book, the story blooms like a beautiful rose and I could not wait to see what was around the next turn. Each of the characters are complex, flawed humans with facets that make you love them and furious with them at the same time.

I fell into this book hard. It grabbed me from the first chapter and did not let go. That is until, the last chapter.

Spoilers ahead:

I hate when a book does this, it's like the author realized that he was almost out of pages and was like, "oh, no! I better wrap this up and put a bow on it." There is so much setup. the characters appear deep and flawed which I really appreciate and then everything goes off the rails at the end.

I get that her husband stabbed her in the hand with a fork but if I had to read that phrase one more time I was going to make a drinking game out of. And really, "meet the devil's tines" as her last words to him, could that be more corny?

This book is not at all what I thought it was going to be and that made it perfect in every way imaginable. I was expecting to dive into a fluffy romance to kick off my summer reading season and what I got was so gut wrenchingly beautiful and deeply meaningful.

I loved each of the characters in there own way and I only wish that some of the secondary ones had an opportunity to be fleshed out more. I want to live in there apartment and become part of there family. I feel like I am already apart of there family.

Like many people who rated this book two stars, I feel like I need to start by saying that this rating is not a reflection of my political opinion. I supported President Obama and continue to enjoy watching the work he is doing for our country.

I knew that an audiobook was going to be the way for me to go on this one because I love the sound of Obama's voice and the content is fairly dry so I was worried I wouldn't be able to focus when reading the book. Obama does not disappoint as a narrator, I felt the comforting embrace of his voice every time I turned the audiobook on. That being said, it was as dull as listening to someone read a telephone book. At times, it sounds like he was just reading pages from his google calendar about what meetings he had that day. The book is soooooooo slow and is only really enjoyable when he goes on a tangent and tells a story.

I listened to all 28 hours of this book and it felt like at some points I was reliving some of his presidency in real time because of how slowly it moved.