Paula Fox

The Coldest Winter Ever

I enjoyed this book. Winter the main character it’s so hard to root for her cause she be doing toooo much.. I won’t lie this book moves fast and there’s a lot of turns. Unfortunately based on the ending her sister will end up just like her. Lol this book has some funny moments but these events that take place definitely happen in real life. 

Jordyn Walker

Neeky Reid

A very interesting book, the main character was hard to cheer for sometimes. Better choices would have bettered the outcome.

Mia Kern

“Now I realized that me and him were just alike. We were both born to win. And, when we were not winning, it was OK 'cause we were busy planning to win.” 

There's a lot to like about this book. As other reviewers have shared, it was raw and authentic, with a quick pace and lots of highs and lows.

Unfortunately, the things that frustrated me about this book greatly overshadowed the things that I appreciated. Winter was an incredibly fun character to follow, but many of her choices were so mind-boggling and selfish that it was hard for me to root for her at all. While I appreciated her sharp wit and strategic thinking, she'd contradict her own plans the page later with some irrational action. Certainly realistic, given that she was a teenager fighting to make it during such a tumultuous time, but frustrating to read nonetheless. And, I think, that's where my biggest issue with the book lies. After everything Winter endured, it doesn't appear that she'd learned anything at all. Sure we as readers could walk away having learned from Winter's actions, but it's less than satisfying that Winter herself had very little growth.

Actually, scratch that. My biggest issue with the book was it's constant depictions of sex. I completely understand that sex is a major part of Winter's life, and sharing all of those details is part of what makes this book so authentic. But I both couldn't relate and also had no interest in reading about a teenager's explicit sexual activities. (Especially when so many of them were non-consensual and the book just brushes that off. Yikes).

I'm glad that I read this book, it certainly has a lot of value. But it just didn't resonate with me for a multitude of reasons.

Bvhh759

A Novel

John Candy

Desiree Young

Sha-Tyra Clausell

drikkes

Glenda Baker

Anna R

Evan Huang

Juana 

In this elegant and affecting companion to her "extraordinary" memoir, Borrowed Finery, a young writer flings herself into a Europe ravaged by the Second World War (The Boston Globe) In 1946, Paula Fox walked up the gangplank of a partly reconverted Liberty with the classic American hope of finding experience—or perhaps salvation—in Europe. She was twenty-two years old, and would spend the next year moving among the ruins of London, Warsaw, Paris, Prague, Madrid, and other cities as a stringer for a small British news service. In this lucid, affecting memoir, Fox describes her movements across Europe's scrambled borders: unplanned trips to empty castles and ruined cathedrals, a stint in bombed-out Warsaw in the midst of the Communist election takeovers, and nights spent in apartments here and there with distant relatives, friends of friends, and in shabby pensions with little heat, each place echoing with the horrors of the war. A young woman alone, with neither a plan nor a reliable paycheck, Fox made her way with the rest of Europe as the continent rebuilt and rediscovered itself among the ruins. Long revered as a novelist, Fox won over a new generation of readers with her previous memoir, Borrowed Finery. Now, with The Coldest Winter, she recounts another chapter of a life seemingly filled with stories—a rare, unsentimental glimpse of the world as seen by a writer at the beginning of an illustrious career.

The Coldest Winter Ever

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