Book: Life After Life by Kate AtkinsonGenre: Historical Fiction with a fantasy element
Rating: ★★★☆ ☆
(Trying out another idea for book review/thoughts. What's your feedback?)
Short Synopsis: Ursula is born in 1911 and immediately dies. And then is immediately born again. This time she lives. Until she drowns at age 4. At which time, she is born again. And so on and so on and so on. Each time she is born again, she learns a little about how to get a bit further in life. Sometimes it takes several times. She survives the flu epidemic, WWI, WWII and many other interesting things. How many times will it take to get things right?
Five Reasons to Read This Book
1. You'll learn a lot about different time periods in history.
2. You'll feel like you are right there experiencing the bombs of WWII.
3. You'll see what it might have been like to know Hitler personally.
4. It will make you think about how you live you life and what you would do differently if you could start all over again.
5. Rich thoughtful writing.
Five Reasons to Skip This Book
1. No swoony romantic parts.
2. Lots and lots of detail. A bit on the wordy side.
3. Repetition as this character lives her life over and over again.
4. Not many likable characters.
5. A great hook in the beginning that failed to deliver.
Bottom Line: For me the reasons to read overpowered the reasons to skip. I enjoyed and loved getting immersed into this time and place (England/Germany between 1911 and 1960) in history.
Other Reviews:
Life After Life has everything I love in a book: interesting well developed characters, a well drawn historical setting, a magical element, and a macabre undertone. From RA for All
I am in the strange position of recommending this book while still kind of warning off traditional romance readers. From Dear Author
Life After Life is good, but it is repetitious in a way it needn’t have been, there is a great deal left unsaid, and the suggestion of intrigue at the beginning is nowhere to be found. From The Worm Hole
So, yeah, sorry but this books was slow, boring and repetitive. It was torture to pick it up and finish. From Alternate Readality
This was one of my favorite books last year; I listened to it and the narration was superb and might have contributed to my appreciation of it. Although I did not entirely love the ending.
ReplyDeleteI like this review style. And, I agree with everything you said, except the reasons to skip overpowered to reasons read for me. It's kind of funny how that worked out, lol.
ReplyDeleteI like this style! I have this sitting on my TBR shelf and still haven't decided when or if I'll tackle it..
ReplyDeleteYep! I like the review style too.
ReplyDelete