This book fell so flat for me, but I’m also just now realizing it was intended for a young adult audience so I think that’s probably why lol it was rated so highly on goodreads and I think there’s a movie or something about it so maybe it already has a large fan base, but this was one of the worst books I’ve read this year. It’s about WWII and the deportation of the Lithuanians so it almost feels even more disrespectful that it was kinda terrible? It was really just hundreds of pages of a concept of a book without anything actually happening except gloom and sadness. The author literally threw in a teenage love story in the middle of a work camp full of starving children and families?? She was intending to show how the protagonist was still just a regular girl who gets crushes and what not but it just felt so out of place in a literal deportation work camp where her family is literally dying and she’s getting butterflies about a cute guy.
Also, the whole premise of the book was that Lina’s drawings would eventually make it to her father, and that’s what you think it’s working towards, but then the book just abruptly ends?? It’s implied that her father survived, but after all the build up the author spent on the protagonist’s drawings and artwork nothing even ended up happening with it. There was zero conclusion or wrap up, it just ends. But I guess I should’ve had more realistic expectations, I wish I had known it was YA before I found it 😅
by qwertycats-