Earlier this week I did something that I haven’t done for a long time: I stayed up late reading a book. I decided that I would read until a certain time before bed and everything was going as planned until the end of the last chapter that I was going to read. And then I had to find out what happened and the next thing I knew I only had ten pages left in the book so I decided to finish it up. There’s something wonderful about the tiredness that comes from going to bed late because of a book. I always feel accomplished the next day, even though the only thing that I accomplished was finishing a book.
It surprised me that The Time Between, by Karen White is the book that kept me up until the wee hours of the morning. I knew from the start that the book was wonderful. The writing is beautiful and I definitely wanted to see how the story progressed. This novel tells the story of two different generations of sisters. Eleanor and Eve live in tension with each other. They live together with their mother and Eve’s husband so that Eleanor can help care for Eve, who was paralyzed in an accident when they were teenagers. When Eleanor’s boss offers her a secondary job working as a caregiver for his elderly aunt, she takes it, looking forward to the opportunity to get away from her home. But things don’t go smoothly when Eleanor first starts working for Helena, whose own sister recently passed away. Helena’s battling her own demons that relate to secrets she and her two sisters kept, secrets that go all the way back to their life in Hungary during WWII.
I usually enjoy stories that have multiple generations of characters, however I also find them to be slower reads because one generation tends to interest me more than the others. In White’s novel we get glimpses into her life with her sisters in Hungary and I was fascinated by all of it. Both stories equally captured my attention and I wanted to know what would happen for Eleanor and Eve as well as what had happened with Helena and her sisters.
I also loved that this novel portrayed a strong father-daughter relationship in Finn (Eleanor’s boss) and his daughter Gigi. They were adorable and I loved both of them.
What have you been reading recently?
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