Mention of suicide, dictatorship, attempted assassinations, abuse, miscarriages, genocide, revenge deportation, murder, death of a child, death of an animal
Dominican main and side characters
Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley, Algonquin Books, and RB Media for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.
I am back to write another review! Yay for getting my reviews in.
This was my first ever Julia Alvarez book and I am so glad that I got to experience her writing for the first time. I am looking forward to checking out the rest of her backlist at some point in my life now that I was able to listen to this one. Oh, also I have to say that Alma Cuervo is an amazing narrator and I feel like she matched well with this story. I personally would have liked if there were other narrators for the “characters” telling their stories, but that’s just my preference. It didn’t take away from Alma’s performance nor the story. But I do feel like she really embodied the character of Alma very well, and thought she was a good choice for the job.
This was such an interesting premise, and it does make me wonder about what all of those characters would be doing if they didn’t have this opportunity to tell their stories. It also kind of makes me wonder if they felt like they should tell their stories so that Alma would actually write them since she was stuck on all of their journeys. Like, one of the things that – as an aspiring writer at one point in my life – I wish I could have experienced was my characters telling me their story and what they wanted me to share to the rest of the world. It could have almost been like if she were taking dictation of their oral story and just transcribing in onto paper for them. It also made me wonder if Alma started suffering from dementia towards the end based on how one of the other side characters described her behavior. It was almost going full circle with what Alma saw happen to her author friend in the beginning of the novel.
I think it was such a beautiful story, and I would love the opportunity to read it physically one day.
Sometimes Leelynn Reads 