5 Stars
Pros: You feel for every almost every single character that appears/Doerr's prose is...so beautiful that words cannot do it justice/Once I started this book, I didn't want to stop.
Cons: Some of the detailed explanations of the smaller parts of a radio and how they worked went over my head but in the overall grand scheme of the book, I barely noticed it.
Full Review:
D-Day is a success. The tide of the war is turning. But in one city in France, Saint Malo, there are still Germans holed up and fighting against the invaders. And in one house, is a young girl, Marie-Laure, scared, uncertain and alone and in her possession is a small gemstone that the Fuhrer and some of those in his employ, are desperately searching for. Blind since she was six, Marie-Laure can't even see the legendary, Sea of Flames, that she has but she knows that her Father left it for her, believed that she could protect it and so she will. Even as bombs drop and buildings burn around her, Marie-Laure is determined to survive and keep what her Father left her, safe.
In the very same city, Werner, a young officer in the German army is listening as the planes fly overhead, as the bombs drop. He knows that the end is coming and yet, he follows his orders. Two of his fellow officers join him in the basement of the hotel that they have commandeered just before a bomb hits the building and reduces it to rubble. Somehow, Werner, Volkheimer and Bernd survive, but they are trapped beneath the ruins of the building with very little food and a damaged radio.
As the days pass and Marie-Laure and Werner struggle to survive, the book breaks down into parts and explains each of their childhoods and what brought them to this city in France at the end of the War.
Words cannot properly express how amazing this book was. Even Werner, who joins the Nazis, if just to get out of his future of being a miner and dying underground like his father, is am amazing character. He has his reasons for why he's done what he's done. He knows that the Reich is breeding insanity, drilling thoughts into childrens' heads but still, he does what he must, determined, or perhaps, terrified of having to return to the orphanage and be trapped in a future where he will die young.
Every decision, every action, everything that each person does is an intricate and complicated thread in an impossibly tangled tapestry that is our lives. Doerr explains all of this in the most beautiful and heartfelt way. I can't possibly explain how beautiful this book was and how even at the end, through it all, I was left speechless and just as thrilled as when I first opened it. This is a book you have to experience for yourself and I hope, that if you decide to read it, you won't be disappointed.
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