My rating: 4 of 5 stars
At first I wasn't really into the book, but then I went back and got into it. I had no idea about the Spanish civil war, all the things that went on in Chile (although I at least had heard about the political leaders), etc. But I think more than anything I just loved learning about the different relationships of the people. It was simply a book about a family and their interactions, their strength, their discoveries, their losses. Maybe I'm so used to reading books that have ulterior motives of a message, which is fine, but sometimes it is refreshing to just learn about a family's lives, written in a very beautiful way (which is what J'nell Ciesielski says- sometimes authors sometimes just want to tell a story, nothing more). Maybe I'm missing something about this book, but I will say it was a beautiful book where the characters became my friends. And now they are gone, and I am missing them already.