If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?
It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.
The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.
A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
Book Overview:
Author: Chloe Benjamin | Series: None | Format: Audiobook | Narrated By: Maggie Hoffman | Length: 11 hours and 30 minutes | Publish Date: January 9, 2018 | Genre: Contemporary & Historical Fiction | Literary Awards: Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Historical Fiction (2018) | Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ | Recommend: Yes
“The cost of loneliness is high, she knows, but the cost of loss is higher.”
It took me about a year or so to read this book in its entirety. I know when I first started it, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I didn’t even finish the first part of the book when I first stopped. Luckily, the Libby app keeps your place if you reborrow a book that you didn’t finish the first time around.
Apparently I was actually done with the first part, and didn’t realize it until it switched POVs to Klara, so that tells you how much I wasn’t paying attention to Simon’s story. I’m sorry, Simon.
Each sibling had their own journey through life that was as different as their personalities. Since the premise of the book is about the Gold children learning from a psychic the exact date that they die, you know that they are going to die in this book. Not so much of a spoiler, but that’s not what we really want to know throughout this book. What made this story interesting was how they lived their lives after knowing when they would die – which just so happens to be the question the synopsis asks you as a reader. Makes sense that the book would try to answer that question in the guise of the Golds.
I honestly felt like each of their stories were heartbreaking for me, but Klara’s the most. I felt for her, and I related to her in a way that was almost scary to me. From the way her husband made her feel until the very end of her story, I just felt like I was reading about myself from another person’s perspective. Each of the Gold children had the knowledge of knowing their death date affect them in totally different ways. Some felt like they wanted to ignore it, chose not to believe the lies from a gypsy woman that probably meant to scare them. Others tried to do everything they could to not let that future come to pass, but none of them could stop it. And really, do you really want to try to stop death from happening? The one natural thing that all living beings must go through?
The more I think about this book, the more I feel like it was one that I needed to read. I think this story may stick with me for a while, or I may think about it when I least expect it. I mean, I can’t get enough of that cover to begin with, so that may be what I see when I reminisce about this book. This was the first time I read anything from Chloe Benjamin, and I think she did an amazing job.
One misfit girl and 50,000 bees. Together they must change the world. As the Mages of the Citadel fight amongst themselves and prepare for war against the Forest, Mielitta, a despised servant, has her own battle to face. Bastien and Jannlou, the boys who terrorised her as a child, have grown into their status as Mages and she cannot escape them forever.
In desperation, she flees to the forbidden Forest and its dangerous attractions. Her scent angers thousands of bees and, although she survives their attack, she has changed. A strange bee symbol glows on her thigh and her senses are altered. She learns that her connection with bees enables her to summon their aid and gives her the power to shift shape.
This new-found bond works both ways and the bees need Mielitta’s help as the rift widens between Forest and Citadel. Can one girl and a colony of bees reunite Man and Nature, or is the split irreversible?
Block Nature out and she’ll force a way in.
Book Overview:
Author: Jean Gill | Series: Natural Forces | Format: eBook – ARC | Length: 273 pages | Publish Date: June 7, 2019 | Genre: YA Fantasy | Rated: ★ ★ | Recommend: Maybe
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
First, I want to say thank you so much to Netgalley for taking a chance on me in giving me this book. I know it’s been a long while since I’ve done a read for review for Netgalley so I honestly wasn’t sure if I was going to get any more requests, but thank goodness I did. Thanks again, Netgalley!
Now on to the actual review.
I tried my hardest to get through this as well. Unfortunately I didn’t get too far, although I did want to do my best. The premise was interesting enough, and the cover really got me. There’s another book from Jean Gill that’s been on my list that I’ve been wanting to read, although I didn’t get a chance to get to it yet, so I went into this one with the hopes that this was going to be an awesome ride. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat for me and I wasn’t able to feel something for Mielitta except for anger. I didn’t understand why Jannlou and Bastien were such jerks to her besides the fact that she didn’t have her maturity ceremony, and maybe if I had continued the story further I would have found out.
I got about 33% into the book before I decided that I wasn’t as emotionally invested as I wanted to be. However, just because it wasn’t my cup of tea doesn’t mean I write it off completely. I did feel for Mielitta for the way she was treated, and I wanted her to kick some major ass on the Citadel, but at that point I didn’t feel like trying to make it that far would be worthwhile.
I may go back into this book in another format when it gets published. Maybe hearing it as an audiobook would be beneficial for me, although I felt like I was getting lost while I read it. There were scenes that seemed to jump without any explanation, or times where the scene felt like it should have ended a few paragraphs ago but was extended without a reason.
The book had promise – and it irritated me how controlling the men of the Citadel were to women and girls enough that I wanted Mielitta to free her fellow women – but at this time, it’s not one that I would continue to read.
Sometimes Leelynn Reads 