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A review by alliepeduto
The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman
4.0
I really liked this, but oddly I wasn’t swept away like I expected to be. I adore Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic series, particularly the recent additions over the past few years (The Rules of Magic is divine!). And any Goodreads friend of mine knows my abiding love of WWII historical fiction. It’s probably the most of any genre I read, for good reason!
But something about this didn’t wow me like I expected to be wowed from a combination of a favorite author and a favorite genre. I worried for a minute that I could be burning out on WWII narratives (they are heavy to say the least), and I learned the hard way from binging thrillers after Gone Girl that sometimes the high can’t be topped. And I’ve read some really stellar WWII, so it’s not a far fetched theory to think I’ve hit my peak reading experience.
But after some reflection, I think it has to do more with magical realism than anything. I love fantasy, and I love historical fiction, but I don’t always love when they get thrown together. It’s the classic jack of all trades but master of none dilemma. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and with something as dark as WWII, I’m not sure it worked.
That being said, I liked this story, and while I wasn’t as attached to the characters as I expected to be, I did love their arcs. It was a very good book, but probably not one that I’ll encourage everyone to read.
But something about this didn’t wow me like I expected to be wowed from a combination of a favorite author and a favorite genre. I worried for a minute that I could be burning out on WWII narratives (they are heavy to say the least), and I learned the hard way from binging thrillers after Gone Girl that sometimes the high can’t be topped. And I’ve read some really stellar WWII, so it’s not a far fetched theory to think I’ve hit my peak reading experience.
But after some reflection, I think it has to do more with magical realism than anything. I love fantasy, and I love historical fiction, but I don’t always love when they get thrown together. It’s the classic jack of all trades but master of none dilemma. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and with something as dark as WWII, I’m not sure it worked.
That being said, I liked this story, and while I wasn’t as attached to the characters as I expected to be, I did love their arcs. It was a very good book, but probably not one that I’ll encourage everyone to read.