Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende

After reading The House of the Spirits, I was eager to read more from Allende. Thankfully my mum seems to have an endless supply of her books; I picked up Of Love and Shadows. It is a beautiful book, definitely not as epic as her debut novel but still lovely and very well-written.

The novel takes place in the horrible time in Chile’s history, after the military coup, during a dictatorship which meant death, terror and poverty for the majority of people. It is essentially a love story, but in this book love and light are constantly fighting with darkness and hatred; as the reader you see two young people fall in love in a background of horror and misery. Yet, throughout the book you never lose sight of the humanity and the hope that manage to survive the most dire situations.

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