Hoda's Reviews > Winter Garden

“To lose love is a terrible thing,But to turn away from it is unbearable. Will you spend the rest of your life replaying it in your head? Wondering if you walked away too soon or too easily? Or if you’ll ever love anyone that deeply again?”

Honestly i had a hard time rating this. If i could,i would rate the first half 50% 1.5 stars and the second 50% 5 stars.i feel like 3 stars is pretty decent so…The first half was so painfully boring i wanted to dnf it so freaking bad. the only thing that kept me going was that i wanted to know Vera story. And It was worth the suffering 💔

“Every choice changed the road you were on and it was too easy to end up going in the wrong direction.”

Tbh I couldn’t careless about Meredith or Nina lives. Both of them annoyed the hell out of me. They gave me a headache, made me wish I didn’t pick this up. So selfish and self centered. Yes i felt bad for them. Yes their grief broke my heart and made me cry. But that was it. I hated the way they treated their men. I know they’re grieving and in pain but that’s not an excuse to hurt other people feeling!! It was down right cruel the way Meredith treated jiff my heart broke for him 💔 The only thing i loved about them was their relationship with their father 🥹 it was so heartwarming and made my heart so happy 💗

“She will remember how she told them what she hadn’t known before: that war is about fire and fear and bodies lying in ditches by the side of the road.”

vera story 🥹❤️‍🩹 cried so hard I couldn’t see the pages. It’s one of the most heartbreaking. Beautiful stories i’ve ever read. Anya story shows you the results of war and how unfair and inhuman and disgusting these results can be. It also shows you how strong women are and what are they willing to do and to sacrifice for their children and their loved ones.My heart is broken, my soul is destroyed, my eyes are bloodshot. Anya story will live with me forever🥲❤️‍🩹the epilogue was so beautiful i want to cry 😭

“I think maybe love can just . . . dissolve.”
“No, it does not,” her mother said.
“So how do—”
“You hang on,” her mother said. “Until your hands are bleeding, and still you do not let go.”

Vera and Sasha: everything happened so fast for me she fall in love with him the first time they met?which made no sense to me. And then I blinked and they were married. I wanted more interaction between them so i can be invested in their relationship but sadly there wasn’t they only talked like 6 or 7 times in the book i counted them. And i know this is a women fiction not romance but still i wanted more then this.

“it hurts too much to see your own pain reflected in another woman’s eyes.”

I read this because it was said that it’s her best work but for me Nightingale is her best work it was way than this better in my opinion. It’s one of the best books i’ve even read i still can’t stop thinking about it and I don’t think i’ll ever stop 🥲💗

Quotes

“Young has nothing to do with love. A woman can be a girl and still know her own heart.”

“You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it. ”

“life—and love—can be gone any second. When you had it, you needed to hang on with all your strength and savor every second.”

“Nina knew the power of black and white images. Sometimes a thing was its truest self when the colors were stripped away.”

“she learned something new, something she hadn’t known before: sex could mean many things; one of them was good-bye.”