Very slow, boring. While I enjoyed the imagery of Bulgaria, this book did not pay on its promise of suspense and intrigue.

I LOVED Kostova's The Historian [The Swan Thieves, not so much] so was very excited to read this book prepub.

SO DISAPPOINTED. I just could not get into it and slogged through. Nothing captured my attention. Neither the present nor the back story. Bulgaria and history--didnt work. In fact, IMHO, nothing did. I tried. This is a long book [nearly 500 pages] and I kept thinking--at some point the plot would turn and I would be engaged.

The premise was very interesting: Alexandra Boyd, a young American woman, still bereaved years later [filled with guilt] at the loss of her brother, travels to Sofia, Bulgaria to teach English--hoping for a new lease on life. [When they played geography games, Bulgaria was his favorite]. Shortly after her arrival in Sofia [at the beginning of the novel], she helps an elderly couple--and their son [?] into a taxi and realizes too late that she has accidentally kept one of their bags. She finds an ornately carved wooden box holding an urn filled with human ashes, and engraved with the name: Stoyan Lazarov. Thus we begin.

And move VERY, VERY SLOWLY so much so that I neither saw the suspense [?really, other readers?] nor cared. There is culture, politics, and human interactions across generations but ultimately SO FLAT. I think the readers who loved it just had a totally different experience.

So maybe someone else should persevere and be rewarded with a great read. Just didnt happen to me.

Do not read Kostova’s Shadow Land thinking it is in the same vein as The Historian or you will be disappointed. Instead know going in you will not find any suspenseful thrillers, mystical elements from the Historian, movie style action sequences or soap opera drama; what you will find is a poignant and beautiful story about a woman needing atonement for a perceived wrong doing. It is a slow buildup rather than a fast pace attention grabber and when the conclusion comes it does so with a whisper rather than a bang. In fact if you begin to speed read or gloss over sentences, paragraphs or even whole chapters you will miss vitally important story elements because they often happened so quickly I had to reread sections to find what I missed.

This is a story about suffering that accompanies loss and the repentance that follows. It is a story about a woman’s journey to find acceptance with herself and the importance of family. It is a story about a country, its politics, its wars and most importantly its beauty.

Shadow Land is that painting that grabs you as you’re strolling through the museum which you would’ve passed because it’s not as flashy as the other pieces. As you stand there staring at it you feel it speaking to your soul, pulling at you so that it can allow its story to unfold.

Let Shadow Land pull you into its beauty with Kostova’s poetic and descriptive writing style, its lyrical dialogue and long reaching story arch.

This book is gorgeous and so incredibly moving. I found myself lost in Bulgaria and it was incredible. This story is haunting and beautiful.