Dara Horn

Two Sentence Plot: A young mother relinquishes her ability to die to save her first son’s life, and as she lives through the centuries facing the consequences of her decision, she keeps crossing paths with another eternal being, her first love. The 21st century brings new difficulties, one of which being her granddaughter searching for the answer to the thing she is cursed by…eternal life.

I thought that a character who has experienced 2,000 years of history would be hard to relate to, but Dara Horn pulls it off wonderfully. A unique take on the age old story of living forever. The story seamlessly switches from past to present and allows the reader to understand Rachel’s experience of being eternal. The reader’s questions about “how does being eternal work exactly” are given satisfying answers. Though the reader can understand the characters, it’s takes a while to care about them. I especially had a hard time liking Rachel’s first love, Elazar. It eventually got there, but for the longest time he made me have the “ick”. I’m also not sure how much you’re expected to root for their love story. In my opinion, it’s not the heartbeat of the story. Rachel’s love for her children and grandchildren is. Therefore, I would not recommend reading it only for the love story. Before reading, it is good to know that Judaism has an important role to the lives of the characters and the plot. I still enjoyed the story even though I don’t practice that faith, but I think I would like it more if I did.

I liked the….

- Exploration of the meaning of life
- Connection between the past and present
- Interesting ending

I disliked the…

- Paragraph long explanation of slurping sounds of someone drinking a smoothie (p. 161)
- Amount of time it took me to care about the romance

Content Rating: 18+, contains language and sexual content

Recommend to readers who like thought provoking stories and learning about historical events in the Middle East.… (lisätietoja)