The Paper Palace: The No.1 New York Times Bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Bookclub Pick

This book brings up childhood memories and envelops you in sun and sand 😌

The Paper Palace is one of those books I admired more than I enjoyed. The writing is genuinely beautiful, very atmospheric, very show, don’t tell. That said, I found the story a bit unsure of itself. At times it felt like it couldn’t quite decide whether it wanted to be a love story or a deeper exploration of trauma and the long shadow it casts. Eleanor is clearly the centre of the book, but there are a lot of side characters, some of whom are described in detail and then don’t really go anywhere, which left me feeling a little disconnected. Eleanor herself is a character I felt for, even when she frustrated me. Her passivity and confusion make sense when you consider her background, and in that way she feels very real. This book isn’t romantic in the traditional sense. It is much more about how our pasts shape us, and how the choices we make are often rooted in experiences we can’t fully escape.