Review: The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons

I thought I would be good, hold off, make this book #1 of 2012.  And then there came a point of no return, I had to finish it.  So it is book 101 of 2011, and the last book: Paullina Simon's The Bronze Horseman.

(From now on, instead of writing my own synopsis, I'ma copy the one from Goodreads)

Leningrad 1941: the white nights of summer illuminate a city of fallen grandeur whose palaces and avenues speak of a different age, when Leningrad was known as St Petersburg. Two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, share the same bed, living in one room with their brother and parents. The routine of their hard impoverished life is shattered on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invades Russia. For the Metanov family, for Leningrad and particularly for Tatiana, life will never be the same again. On that fateful day, Tatiana meets a brash young man named Alexander. The family suffers as Hitler's army advances on Leningrad, and the Russian winter closes in. With bombs falling and the city under siege, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn inexorably to each other, but theirs is a love that could tear Tatiana's family apart, and at its heart lies a secret that could mean death to anyone who hears it. Confronted on the one hand by Hitler's vast war machine, and on the other by a Soviet system determined to crush the human spirit, Tatiana and Alexander are pitted against the very tide of history, at a turning point in the century that made the modern world.

This book destroyed me, in every way.  I started it on Wednesday, and I was powerless to put it down.  As much as I wanted it to be my first book of 2012, I just couldn't hold out, and here it is.

The love story is true, and harsh, and beautiful.  So many times I got enraged at the forces that were keeping Tatiana and Alexander apart, wondering when they would work things through.  The end of the book killed me; I cried as hard as I did when I was six years old and saw the original Little Mermaid (I didn't realize that in the non-Disneyfied version, she kicks it).  There is hope, though -- I bought the sequel, Tatiana and Alexander, today and I'm starting it tomorrow.

The only -- ONLY -- problem I had with this book was the 70-page break for love scene upon love scene.  It really hindered the plot.  But once you got past that, it was amazing.  Really, I can't recommend this book enough.

Rating **** and 1/2