No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“It was something she would tell her son later, when he was learning to read himself—how your first read of an extraordinary book is something you can only experience once.”
This book is a premise that I hadn’t read before. It’s a story of ten different people. The first one writes a book to help cope with deep sorrow in her life and the nine others experience the book in their own unique way, through the lens of their own lives and get affected differently.
Some of them are connected to each other in small ways, some in bigger ways, and some not really. And yet this book flows through their life and doesn’t leave them the same as a result.
“It was probably six hours later when Theo met the love of his life. There were no fireworks, no steamy glances across a room. Just two human beings, falling together like puzzle pieces, which made sense because both of them were broken, their edges not the smooth arcs or straight lines of others, which fit easily into so many situations. No, there was only one place each of them belonged, and that was with the other. It sounded dramatic, but wasn’t. More like an animal finding its natural habitat.”
Some people will say it’s cheesy and it’s more like interconnected short stories than it is a novel. And some of the characters have a lot of telling vs showing. And yet I loved it. I loved the broken characters. I loved waiting to see how they’d be connected. I loved waiting to see when and how the book would show up and I loved seeing how it would change them. I felt connected and invested in each of these characters.
“Different from sleeping, where you had no choice where you went. Picking up a book was a decision: I’m going to go away. The exciting possibility: I may not come back the same.”
I am not the same because I read this beautiful book. Because, books, they change you. And I am so grateful for that.
with gratitude to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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