A review by bookish_den
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

❤️‍🔥 What I liked:

•Daunis character felt very real, I can see her existing out there with how complex she was written.
•How craftily the different plots intertwined: the mystery, the romance, the community, Angeline builds them step by step so you don’t notice how much of them is driving the story and its hard to compartmentalize and define what was at its core, I dare to say the community was. 
•The use of the language was so interesting, so intentional, I loved how much authenticity it added to the story.
•The audiobook was absolutely fantastic! Isabella Star LaBlanc did an outstanding job in it.
•Probably one of the most gorgeous covers ive ever seen

❤️‍🩹 What I wasn’t a fan of:

•Daunis character if real, felt very “not like other girls” to a point it got annoying
•Im mad at the ending, it was very open and I understood why, but im still mad at the characters for the choices they made and the ones that were made for them. I know there is a sequel set years after, im just blaming this one on me and my own ingenuity, life is imperfect and unjust, I just hated to be reminded of it. On a more objective analysis I truly feel it left many loose ends that could have been explained.

•I honestly think we could have done it without the romance subplot cause it ended up being unsatisfying and I hate that it is the main thing im left thinking of after so much more important plots happened 😩

•Some very heavy topics were handled almost casually and the grief could have been more explored, in the same way some other topics could have been cut back a bit, at times it felt dense.

🎁 Wrapping things up:

This book wrecked me, it struggled to pull me in for a long time but the emotional gut punch it packs in the last 150 pages left me breathless. 

The emotional attachment I had to the characters sneaked up on me, I didn’t really felt it until an awful concoction of sadness, impotence, dissatisfaction and disappointment had me ugly crying by the end, I was listening to the audiobook and had to stop and switch to the ebook for the last chapters cause it was too raw to hear her voice for what was left. 

Full of cultural richness, from beliefs to traditions and the inner workings of the community, it manages to immerse you into the native american culture as a whole and the Anishinaabe culture in particular 

In my opinion a masterpiece of a book I’ll be thinking about and probably still mad at for a long time. 
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