Going into this book, I knew very little about the Spanish Civil War. I knew some about the beginning and some about the end, but this was a new thing to read about for me. I thought that the book did a great job of making the reader learn as we go along and feel engaged with the period, but also of having mentions of what happened to characters earlier on as we go without being overwhelmed with the information . They have already lived through a lot of trauma, but not in a way that made it feel like the story had already happened off page.
The history was definitely the best part of the book, I just felt so fascinated reading about the war and its impact on citizens, but especially with adopted children.
There were also several character point of views, including Daniel and Ana (our main characters) as well as Ana’s family. I’m not sure how important all of these points-of-view changes were. Sometimes they interacted with each other in interesting ways, other times it felt pointless and more like filler. That being said, I enjoyed seeing how everyone was impacted by events in different ways. You have Ana who just wants to work in the hotel and learn English, Puri who watches babies at an orphanage, Rafe who feels very angry and he and his friends want to change things, Julia who wants to play it safe and provide for her family, and Daniel who is the American son of an oil tycoon and who wants to be a photographer and is visiting Spain for the first time. His mother is Spanish but hasn’t been to Spain in a long time. The fact that it was written in third-person also made it easy to tell whose perspective I was reading, which was a plus since that is one of my biggest complaints about multiple PoVs.
So why only 3 stars? While I liked the characters, they never felt real to me. I never felt invested in their fate or worried about what was going to happen to them. The writing felt distant from the events, too, like I was reading about all of these horrific things and while I was interested in them from a historical standpoint, I never felt like I was emotionally impacted by the story.
The history was definitely the best part of the book, I just felt so fascinated reading about the war and its impact on citizens, but especially with adopted children.
There were also several character point of views, including Daniel and Ana (our main characters) as well as Ana’s family. I’m not sure how important all of these points-of-view changes were. Sometimes they interacted with each other in interesting ways, other times it felt pointless and more like filler. That being said, I enjoyed seeing how everyone was impacted by events in different ways. You have Ana who just wants to work in the hotel and learn English, Puri who watches babies at an orphanage, Rafe who feels very angry and he and his friends want to change things, Julia who wants to play it safe and provide for her family, and Daniel who is the American son of an oil tycoon and who wants to be a photographer and is visiting Spain for the first time. His mother is Spanish but hasn’t been to Spain in a long time. The fact that it was written in third-person also made it easy to tell whose perspective I was reading, which was a plus since that is one of my biggest complaints about multiple PoVs.
So why only 3 stars? While I liked the characters, they never felt real to me. I never felt invested in their fate or worried about what was going to happen to them. The writing felt distant from the events, too, like I was reading about all of these horrific things and while I was interested in them from a historical standpoint, I never felt like I was emotionally impacted by the story.