All The Light We Cannot See

Fantastic story from the start but the packaging was so basic, some of the pages were shrink and folded.

This is a very beautiful book and its something I will read over and over again.

havent read it yet but looks cool

page turner

I really value my books. When opening the package. The cover was already damaged at the top. A bit disappointed!

There were only two hugely popular books that I had been disappointed in until now: Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks and Atonement by Ian McEwan. I am afraid this book joins their company today! I have absolutely no idea what made it so popular and why this "masterpiece" won Pulitzer's Prize in 2015 but I really hate this book! The sad thing is that the writing is very good but the author's abysmal storytelling ruined it all for me!The book is nearly 600 pages long. All made up of very short chapters of 2-3 pages long. Just as you start to get into the story, the next chapter takes you into a completely different time period without any warning or prelude! In places, the book unexpectedly introduces random new characters in a completely unconnected fashion (and only for one chapter of 2-3 pages!) before the story jumps again to the main characters in the following chapter.I am not a stranger to difficult to read books or to stories made up of multiple strands and lifetimes of many characters across decades and sometimes even centuries of history but I hated this book!The author's writing has been ruined by his inability to tell the story in a compelling way that would be coherent and enjoyable to read! Such a shame but this is one hugely disappointing read!

The language in the book is perhaps one of the most important bits, it is written with such rich and lively details that at times, I could almost see myself in places where Marie-Laure was or where Werner was. That was one of the most brilliant things about the book. There are many more. I think the fact that the author could transport me to that time period, make me as tense as Marie-Laure or Werner just makes me so happy?Is happy a word to be used when talking about this book, this time period? Maybe not but the author did make me very happy. It’s very important to me that I feel connected to the characters and transported to places in the books and it did that and more.The book jumps from time periods of Marie-Laure’s and Werner’s life, from their teen years to their younger years and back and forth. Sometimes it was a bit confusing to keep track of it, sometimes because it was an e-book, it was even frustrating to not be able to flip back to the pages I lost my thread. (An actual paperback really helps with this, it just gives me satisfaction if nothing else.)Everything about the book made me fall in love with it. There are the usual World War II horrors and you can’t escape them, most times, I was so acutely uncomfortable with the scene but I moved ahead anyway. This book is an absolute must-read if you like reading about the World War II. Not because it’s super informative or because there’s tons of other things that could make you relate to the people of the times more. It’s more to understand how it felt for the children, for those who grew up in Germany and had to join Hitler’s army. For the children who had nobody left, those who couldn’t do much for themselves. Marie-Laure and Werner might be fictional but there were real people who were in their places at some point. They must have faced countless problems and horrors.It is that feeling that makes me think that people should really read it.I have a lot of wonderful things to say about it and I could say it but there’s also the one bit that I felt almost unnecessary in the book. Yes, the hunt for the Sea of Flames. The diamond. That part always felt unnecessary and almost tacked on as if it was an afterthought. I am not saying I didn’t enjoy the fantasy of it and there was a realistic part to it but at the same time, it just didn’t click with the rest of the book.However that does not negate all the awesome things about this book and so, this remains a five-star book.I would recommend it to anyone who loves to read World War II fiction or who wants to see how language can be elevated to this level. If you wanna read in leisure, you totally can!! This book, despite it being based during the World War II, has an almost unhurried pace to it. It’s just me who wouldn’t stop reading.And if you still have any doubts about this book, it’s worth mentioning that it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015. So, there’s that?

Books like this only arrive once every 10-20 years. I feel as though 1.000.000+ emotions have been carefully, skilfully and beautifully drawn out of me in reading this story. When learning to read as a child, great books had a way of making you ‘feel, taste, smell, sense, hear, see and ‘live’ the; words, emotions, people, story lines and places. It helped you to ‘experience’ the very inducement of why we should read. This story travels through one of the most truly horrific and debased times in human history itself. Characters are depicted from the spectrum of nations, but more importantly, a host of backgrounds and life circumstances. The main characters are, quite simply, ‘so human’ and so ‘fallible’ it makes you want to keep reading for the beauty and simplicity of it. It took me a little over a day to ‘consume’ the book in a few sessions. The way it’s written in short chapters, flitting between the cast and the storylines is quite perfect. Go ahead and form your own opinions. It’s a ‘if you only read one book this year’ moment with this one. At the end of the book, it felt as though I’d lived through something amazing, truly understanding how people overcame, and moved forward.Less than 24 hours after reviewing a different book (I read 2 days ago) ‘Tunnel 29’, where at the end of the review, I said it was my favourite book of the year, here I am today, now proclaiming, ‘this’ is now my favourite book of the year, so far. Only by a fraction, though, as that other book is tumultuous in a different style.

I always think that a great book is one that makes you think, and that makes you question what you thought you already knew. That leaves you with new perspectives that stay with you long after you have finished reading. This book delivered in all these areas.The horror of WWII was hardly a groundbreaking subject, but this story manges to make you look at it in a way you may never have before.I fell in love with Werner's character from the beginning. He was so authentic and I really felt his pain and his struggle to accept the difficult decisions he has to make. A wonderful character who, even though he would be considered to be "the bad guy" by historical standards, is the most loveable and relateable in the novel. It is a testament to how good the writing is, to think that I was most invested in the fate of this young Nazi boy. The chapters surrounding his time at school were wonderfully descriptive, and equally horrific. They will stay with me for a long time.I do have to say that the book was rather long, and a bit slow to start, so it did take me a while to get into it. The storyline surrounding the sea of flames frustrated me slightly, as it seemed like little more than a plot accelerator. However, the well developed characters and insight into wartime Europe more than makes up for this.All in all, a great book.

I bought this book based on the huge number of 4 & 5 star reviews it got. However, it wasn't really anywhere close to being as outstanding as I expected. There isn't a great deal of dialogue from the characters, its predominately descriptive narrative, which although well written, made it hard to empathise with the characters. Along with the 1-2page length chapters with every chapter flipping between the separate storylines of the two main characters, coupled with the shunting back/forth in time to almost the end of the story and back to the beginning again, I found it disruptive and difficult to stick with.And although the closing chapters of the book, when the two main characters come closer to meeting, were much more engrossing than the initial 80% of the book, the very ending of Werner's story and the present day closure of Marie Laures story were so deflating, inconclusive and vague, I began to wonder if somehow I had managed to skip several chapters. I hadnt, the ending is loose & sorely disappointing given the investment in pursuing the characters to the end.