Book Review: The Book of Pearl

Author: Timothee de Fombelle
Pages: 384 Pages
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Publication Date: 06 Feb 2018
Publisher: Candlewick Press

Blurb

Joshua Pearl comes from a world that we no longer believe in — a world of fairy tale. He knows that his great love waits for him there, but he is stuck in an unfamiliar time and place — an old-world marshmallow shop in Paris on the eve of World War II. As his memories begin to fade, Joshua seeks out strange objects: tiny fragments of tales that have already been told, trinkets that might possibly help him prove his own story before his love is lost forever. Sarah Ardizzone and Sam Gordon translate the original French into a work both luminous and layered, enabling Timothée de Fombelle’s modern fairy tale to thrum with magic. Brimming with romance and history, mystery and adventure, this ode to the power of memory, storytelling, and love will ensnare any reader’s imagination and every reader’s heart.

Review
3 Stars

Before I start this review I wanna take moment and say something about this cover. This is a beautiful, gorgeous and so attractive cover, I love it ❤

This book was really hard to review, I’ve been struggling to finish it. I think most of the issues I had with this book was that it felt like something just got lost in the translation.
From the first chapter, I fell in love with the characters and I was nose-deep in the book, and the love story here is so well written and engaging.

At first, I cared about these characters, I wanted to know more and I thought the story itself is a unique and beautiful tale. Somewhere in the middle, I just stopped caring, I got bored and most importantly, I got confused by all the timelines switching and the plot.
There were moments in this book that were written so beautifully and on others, I truly struggled to keep going.

The last few chapters were beautiful again and the story concluded in such a wonderful way that made me change my mind and give this book 3 stars and not 2.

The Book of Pearl had a very strong fairy tale vibe to it and so it was very exciting reading it and fall in love with the characters and the worlds, but somewhere in the middle it got more and more confusing for me and I lost interest. From the Pov changes, the timeline switching and the plot within a plot 😀 But even though I got lost in all of this, I still think it was a nice book to read and the ending of the book was truly satisfying for me.

Overall it was a nice read, even with the mid-book struggle and I think that the original version of this book (in French) will be an amazing book to read.

I received this book in a format of PDF from NetGalley for an honest review.

You can find the book over at

Amazon

As always, thank you so much for reading ❤

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