I saw a friend post about this book awhile ago and finally found it in half price books in hardback.
It’s a thick book – 531 pages and I read everyone of them. Why? I don’t really know. I just kept thinking that something was going to happen. I kept thinking that there was something more to the secret gemstone. I kept thinking there would be more to the story of the blind girl and the young German boy who protected her in the end.
Their ‘paths don’t collide”…. they just come across each other gradually with the German boy, Werner recognizing the recordings her grandfather and then she was making…and keeping it a secret from his commander to keep her safe.
So much more could have happened. What about the boy Frederick who was bullied by the Germans because he couldn’t keep up physically? Why did he put that in the story at all? It just doesn’t fit in.
The whole story was about a diamond and no one knows where it is in the end.
There was so much more that this book could have been. I don’t know how it got to be a best seller with so little in the plot. I guess the writing was enough to keep me going and reading. Sooo disappointing though. OMG. I should rewrite it and have it be 100 x better.
List of Characters:
Marie-Laure LeBlanc – A blind French girl; the main character
Werner Pfennig – A German orphan boy, very scientifically gifted; the second main character
Daniel LeBlanc – Marie-Laure’s father and the head locksmith at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris
Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel – a sergeant major and gemologist in the German army
Etienne LeBlanc – Marie-Laure’s great-uncle and a resident of Saint-Malo
Madame Manec – Etienne’s longtime maid and housekeeper
Jutta Pfennig – Werner’s sister
Frau Elena – caretaker of Werner and Jutta in the orphanage
Hauptmann – Werner’s professor at Schulpforta
Frederick – Werner’s friend; very strong-willed
Frank Volkheimer – Werner’s friend; a sergeant in Nazi army
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