I will read any book be it philosophical or fantasy. These r my past reads if they might help. Just a couple of days back I was thinking abt reading count of monte cristo or Nietzsche Im confused.

What are your thoughts on this book? How much you rate this book in a scale of 10?

Some off the wall covers I’ve been collecting lately. Looks cool on the shelf too

Curious what people think of it.

I just picked this up this afternoon. Shoutout to the great local store that ordered it for me! I’ve been very excited about starting this one for a while.

Nicee

I just moved and my books all fit in the same room again!

Reading this book felt like a warm hug. I picked this book up this morning, and before I knew it, I’d finished it. I couldn’t put it down because it felt like someone had reached into the parts of me that still carry loss and grief and parts that ached and somehow found the words I’d never been able to. There are feelings that sit inside you for years, too heavy, too confusing to explain, just a hollowness, a void staring and this book, for me, gave those feelings a voice. Sometimes all we need is for someone to put a name to what we’re carrying. It doesn’t make the pain disappear, but it makes it feel less lonely. By the end of this book, I felt understood, I felt seen.

People often describe this as a novel about grief, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. Grief is everywhere in these pages, yes, but underneath it is an even bigger story about love. The love between siblings who slowly become strangers. The love between friends who become each other’s safe place. The kind of love that never really disappears. Every relationship in this book is touched by loss, but none of them are defined by it.

At eleven years old, Jules loses both of his parents in a car accident. Along with his older brother Marty and sister Liz, he is sent to a boarding school where the three of them begin grieving in completely different ways. Instead of bringing them closer, the tragedy slowly creates distance between them. It is there that Jules meets Alva, another child carrying her own loneliness, and from that moment their lives become intertwined. The novel follows them over several decades as they grow, drift apart, find each other again, make mistakes, lose people, and try to figure out what it means to keep living after life has changed you forever.

What Benedict Wells does so beautifully is write about trauma in multi layered story where one gets to know the stories of other characters closely through the eyes of Jules. Benedict showcased trauma in such a realistic manner that I saw parts of myself riddled with similar loneliness in each character. The novel shows how grief changes people in ways they don’t even notice. It makes them push away the people they love, miss opportunities, and spend years trying to become someone they recognise again. That honesty is what made this book so devastating.
There were moments where I wished certain characters had been explored a little more. I wanted to understand Marty and Liz beyond the fragments we were given, and I would have loved a deeper look into Alva’s life as well. There are also a few moments where relationships shift or people disappear without much explanation. But strangely, I don’t know if I would change that. Life rarely gives us complete stories or satisfying answers. People leave. Relationships change. We never fully understand why, and perhaps that’s exactly what Wells was trying to capture.

This is a sad book, but I never found it depressing. There’s a difference. It reminded me that pain is the price we pay for loving deeply, and while loss is inevitable, so is the possibility of healing. Somehow, this novel left me with hope instead of despair. It made me want to hold the people I love a little closer and be more open with my own heart, because even if love ends in heartbreak, it is still worth choosing.

This book is so many fairytales at once. Reminds me kind of Alice in wonderland, but while there, the story is things that happen in a dream and are nonsense, here it has continuation based on Bastians' wishes. And I like the rule that one wish needs to continue the other. But if you wish for something abruptly that doesn't continue the story there will be consequences. Haven't finished it yet but I'm a looking forward to see how Bastian holds the values of his true self since his loosing parts of him with every wish. 🐲