No, I hate this freakin' book.
It is so bad.
I had to read it because my teacher told me to and the whole Reading-List-for-Summer-and-8th-Grade is mandatory. Damned you be, R-L-f-S-a-8-G. It had a good start. Out of every single decade of the twentieth century, I always liked some specific ones: the 20s, the 40s, the 70s and the 90s. The twenties were cool and colorful. The 70s and the 90s are the best examples of the evolution from the 19th century to the 20th one. But on the other hand, I liked the 40s because it was explosive. I am not a fan of WWII, but it was an interesting battle between powers and bombs. And a lot of the book takes place around these years.
Poor 40s, this book is so abusive of them. The war scenes and everything non-Stefan-related (including Gian, Mirona's time at Paris and her family scenes) were so good. Stefan ruined the whole thing.
That romance is bad. It's awful. It's disgusting. And I've got no problem with romances between people with big age differences, especially when thee guy is older. (My great-grandparents, [both dead], had an age difference of 13 years; my grandparents, [grandpa dead] had an age difference of 13 years; my parents, [dead daddy explains the past tense], had an age difference of 13 years; Tyler Hoechlin and I have got an age difference of 13 years, so... sorry but I think it's pretty fine for the guy to be older.
But the personality and the attitude of Stefan ruined the whole thing, I guess. I've been thinking a lot how to handle the relationship and the situation and I really think that Stefan only wanted Mirona in bed.
That's my conclusion and because of that character, I cannot rate the book better, even though Gian, Mirona's time at Paris and Mirona's family scenes were quite good.
Overall, I DISLIKE it because the book is about two things: half of the book is about Mirona's relationships (75% of this half is about Stefan, thus I don't like it), and the other half is about Mirona searching for her grandmother, Fana, who is a free woman, doing whatever the hell she wants. And she finds a letter and it is somehow explained, the whole family mystery, but still, it doesn't end! Family issue is solved; everybody figures out what was with Catrina and everybody else. But after reading that letter which explains little to nothing about Fana, Mirona stops her searches.
What the hell?
I looked on Wikipedia and Cella Serghi didn't die without finishing the books. She left it purposely unfinished. Truth be told, I am happy there hadn't been more pages of it, but still, I would have liked more if it had a final and good conclusion.
Relatively good.