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Title: Her Fearful Symmetry
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
ISBN/Publisher: 978-1-4391-6539-3/Scribner (part of Simon & Schuster)
Age Group/Genre: Adult
This is the story of Elspeth, her twin nieces (Julia and Valentina), and her younger boyfriend/downstairs neighbor (Robert). Elspeth dies of leukemia and leaves her diaries to Robert, whom is obsessed with keeping her in his memory. Her London flat is left for her nieces that have no memory of her. The terms laid out in the will for Julia and Valentina to get the place is that their parents are not allowed to step into the flat and they must live in it for a year before selling it.
Once the twins are in London, Valentina starts to resent her sister. Julia has always been the dominating of the two, but now Valentina wants her own life. Then, there's Robert who is trying to write his thesis on the historic Highgate Cemetery and knows a lot about the Victorian time period. Also in the building where they live is Martin, an OCD person, who is living by himself because his wife could not take his rituals any longer. Now the twist is that Elspeth is still around, but as a ghost trying to figure out her new body.
How will Elspeth haunt the twins and Robert??? And how will it affect them???
The beginning of the book was good. I thought the premise of it was really interesting and the beginning was also the time where you get to know who is in the story and their backgrounds. I also wanted to get to know the twins more and to see how Robert dealt with Elspeth's death. My favorite part of the story was when Elspeth was learning how to be a ghost. It was an interesting point of view.
Then, the book kind of dragged. It started to get way too weird for me and Elspeth's character made me upset. Julia's dependency on Valentina became really frustrating, but on the bright side we get to know Martin a little bit better because of Julia. And Martin was by far my fave character in the novel.
The story was way to weird for me (at times kind of disturbing), but the character's still lured me in because I wanted to know how they changed in the end. I'm really glad I didn't buy it. If you want to read it...I would recommend getting it from the library.
My Rating
(by the way this book was won on Facebook from Regal Literary)
I still haven't brought myself to review this. You're right, it did drag. It took forever for me to get through, and I kept hanging on expecting this big finish, and it just let me down.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a long time, too. But I was hoping it was because I was sick. I didn't want to write this review, but since I won it I felt like I needed to. I wasn't even sure how to write this one. Good luck writing yours (if you even do)!!!
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