I received this ARC from netgalley.com in exchange for a review. 

Set in 1760's London. When country girl Anna's mother died, her father sends her to the city to live with her well-to-do aunt and uncle to be introduced to a prospective husband. Although she receives an engagement offer from an up and coming lawyer, her heart has fallen in love with a poor silk weaver.

The Silk Weaver and/or The Hidden Thread deeply delves into the trade of 1760's silk weaving including the politics around it. Many historical locations and people are involved in the story, I could imagine the sights and smells as Anna was experiencing them. 

Good story and I would recommend this book.

4☆

I have read both of Elizabeth Kostova's previous novels and enjoyed them. The most common criticism's I've read are that they develop too slowly with not enough action. For me, they do develop slowly but, in this case, that's a positive thing. I sometimes can be an inpatient reader. It's not that I need all action. For the most part though, I don't do well with books that describe the side of a mountain for ten pages. (I'm looking at you, Lord of the Flies.) However, give me a book where the character development and descriptions are deep and rich and I will gladly read a book with what one might call a slower building plot. For if I can get attached to the characters, I will stick with them till the end. Fans of Kostova's previous books, "The Historian," and, "The Swan Thieves," will savor this one like I did. She again masterfully blends history and fiction, with characters who will be on my mind for a long time. 

You can also find my review on my Pinterest book board and my goodreads page which are linked in my profile.

As posted on Open Letters Monthly:

Let’s play a game: I’ll tell you that a book by an American is set in Eastern Europe, and you’ll try to imagine a premise that doesn’t involve vampires, World War II, Communist labor camps, or forest-based fairytales. If you lose, don’t feel bad; few novelists can write about Eastern Europe without losing themselves in sinister sensationalism.

Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian, is an interesting case. On the one hand, she meets our game’s expectation: The Historian, set in Romania and Bulgaria, tells the story of (you guessed it!) Count Dracula; and her third novel, The Shadow Land, set mostly in Bulgaria, takes a detour into “rehabilitative” labor camps. On the other, she defies expectation: she’s traveled throughout Bulgaria extensively for twenty years, she’s married to a Bulgarian, and she established a foundation to help struggling Bulgarian writers. She’s fascinated by the myths, legends, and history of the region, but she combines that fascination with the kind of firsthand knowledge that allows her to examine stereotypes instead of repeating them.

Similar to Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites, in which an Australian author brought 19th-century Iceland to life, The Shadow Land is a foreigner’s love letter to an adopted country. The protagonist, a young American named Alexandra Boyd, has just arrived in Sofia when a mistake leaves her with an urn filled with a stranger’s ashes. Armed with only a name – Stoyan Lazarov – and having befriended a taxi driver named Bobby, she travels across Bulgaria to find the family of the dead man, and finds herself coming alive under the influence of this intoxicating country.

Kostova draws great inspiration in her novels from the Victorians, claiming, “[F]or me they are the great models, and the novelists I read the most often.” Her admiration for the Victorian style comes across in The Shadow Land’s wealth of detailed landscape passages. From open green fields to craggy blue mountains to golden plains, Kostova uses Alexandra’s road trip to share Bulgaria’s multifaceted beauty with Western readers who might picture Eastern Europe as a bleak, gray wasteland.

But Kostova focuses so much of her energy on Bulgaria that she forgets the inner topography of her protagonist. The Victorians employed nature descriptions to complement the intense psychological portraits of the characters, but the lack of distinct artistic flavor in Alexandra’s observations make her seem more like a camera than a person. And this blandness combined with zealous detail becomes even more of a problem whenever Alexandra sets foot in a house, leading to copious passages like the following:

"The hall inside was tiny and paneled with dark wood, and Alexandra saw another sunburst on the ceiling, this one carved with storks flying out of it in four directions. A wooden chest sat against one wall and a striped woolen rug lay on the floor. A very small staircase disappeared up into the second story. Even with these simple furnishings, the hall seemed crowded. The walls were covered with oil paintings – trees and windows, houses, but especially faces, in dense confusion from floor to ceiling."

Descriptions of these sort, though dull, hardly seem like a crime – that is, until you read them for several hundred pages and realize that, no, Kostova will not be skipping over a single staircase or china cabinet on this journey.

Where Kostova succeeds in balancing her setting and characters is in her exploration of sorrow on both the personal and the national level. Alexandra moves to Bulgaria to work as an English teacher, but she chooses Bulgaria in the first place to honor her older brother, Jack, who died mysteriously at the age of sixteen. As children growing up in a rural part of North Carolina, one of their favorite pastimes was quizzing each other on the details of an atlas of Eastern Europe, and Jack’s favorite country was Bulgaria. But as the pale green blob from her childhood maps expands into three-dimensional vibrancy and complexity, Alexandra’s sense of loss also expands. Every new word, food, or sunset reminds her that Jack will never travel to the country of his dreams, or witness its richness with her. Given her baggage, there’s a cruel sort of sense in the fact that within an hour of entering the country, she ends up carting around the physical proof of another family’s grief.

As she drives from one corner of Bulgaria to the next looking for the Lazarov family, Alexandra experiences the sweet, insubstantial nature of a foreigner’s attachment to a new place – the wonder that easily leads to mythologizing, the creeping loneliness of miscommunication, the seesaw of embrace and rejection. But unexpectedly, she finds that her sadness anchors her – both to the people she meets on her journey, and to Bulgaria itself. All the people she meets carry their own tales of the hope, opportunities, or people they’ve lost, and Kostova weaves these stories into the histories of World War II and the communist period. In a charming exchange, a middle-aged woman teaches Alexandra “Bulgarian words for sorrow, for potato and table and spoon,” exposing the cultural priorities hidden in even the simplest vocabulary lesson.

But the reader gets a sense that Alexandra’s vision of Bulgaria is somewhat warped by her willingness to associate the land and its people with hardship and poverty. The country she sees is defined by peeling paint, stray dogs, rusted cars, and sleepy villages. But occasionally, an exchange with her local taxi driver, Bobby, reminds us of the unavoidable myopia of even well-meaning foreigners:

"They passed an old man sitting outside a house with curtains at the open windows, chickens in a small yard, and a tiny church with a surreally bent-over, folded-up woman locking the door. Everyone they saw was old. Alexandra had only imagined such places, but here were people living in them, finishing out their days.
'Do they have television?' she asked Bobby.
'Television?' He seemed to be driving somewhere else, in his head, a million miles away.
'Here, in these villages,' she said.
'Oh, certainly,' he said. 'At least most people. A few might be too poor, but almost everyone has television.'"

The themes of national suffering and poverty come to a head in the figure of the book’s villain, Kurilkov, the current Bulgarian Minister of Roads who hopes to ride his slogan of bez koruptsiya (“without corruption”) all the way to a future post as Prime Minister. For Bobby, Kurilkov embodies all the forces sucking the potential out of post-communist Bulgaria, preventing it from leaving behind destructive mentalities and forging a new national path. He notes to Alexandra:

"My country has come a long way in a short time, in spite of everything. I think we have something special to give the world – culture, and lessons from history. And beauty. It would be tragic for us to go backward. We have already suffered too much."

Whereas Bobby provides a Bulgarian perspective on his country’s present, Kostova uses flashbacks from the life of Stoyan Lazarov to provide a native’s perspective on the past. The beauty of these flashback sections was enough to make me wonder why Kostova chose not to inhabit the past for the bulk of the novel. We first follow Stoyan in 1940 when he returns to Sofia after several years of studying in Vienna. Kostova sets a brisk, energetic pace as we follow this virtuosic violinist on the way to his childhood home. As a foreigner, Alexandra experiences Bulgaria as a series of unforeseen obstacles – everything from greeting to tipping to smiling follows new, inscrutable rules. But for Stoyan, Sofia is home, the place where he can always speak and act correctly without a thought. In an especially well-crafted moment, Stoyan hears snippets of Bulgarian conversations and appreciates that he can understand these snatches of words divorced from their larger contexts – the kind of privilege that a foreigner might forget he once had, until he returns home.

Fresh off the train, Stoyan heads to a bakery, where the local baker’s talk of political isolation throws Stoyan’s youth and possibilities into stark relief:

"For some reason, he wished he could make the baker see the parades, this man who would never leave Bulgaria, who probably took a train out of Sofia once a year to go back to his father’s village – a man who’d perhaps never traveled to the Black Sea at the other end of his own country. Odd, how some people were destined to see the world and some not. He thought of what he himself had already witnessed – horses with tightly braided bundled tails like women’s hair, in a park in London. An aging harpsichordist in a Paris drawing room placing his hands on the keyboard, while a girl with blue satin shoes sat beside him to turn pages. The towering spikes of the cathedral in Prague. The even wider arc he would see in the future suddenly lifted Stoyan, and he felt almost faint with gratitude for the adventure of his life."

Of course, if Stoyan had gone on to live the happy life he envisioned, Alexandra’s story would never have unfolded. Kostova deftly records the unraveling of this gentle, polished, passionate man’s life, revealing the brutality that would haunt him to the end of his days. For these harrowing segments, Kostova transitions to first person, allowing Stoyan to record his memories in the form of a confessional journal. And Stoyan’s account shares the improbably clear memory and hypnotic verbosity of Kostova’s beloved Victorians. His survival techniques avoid feeling like tired literary staples through the fresh, unsentimental quality of the writing.

From there, we flip back and forth between the late 1940s/early 1950s and 2008, with Alexandra’s story usually suffering in the comparison. Stoyan’s struggle feels infinitely more compelling, with Kostova capturing his ever-changing relationships with reality and fantasy in wonderful lines like, “I reminded myself that this must still be happening to me, since I was still alive.” These kinds of moments only make the loose, tedious quality of Kostova’s prose in the Alexandra sections more frustrating. Missteps like, “The woman’s face was like a beak,” and, “[Someone] sighed – Alexandra had never heard such a sound before” are tiresome when they come from a mediocre writer, but completely inexplicable in a novel that contains the clarity and finesse of Kostova’s flashbacks.

Stoyan’s tale is a ringing indictment of the loss of opportunity, free speech, dignity, and sometimes even life that was imposed on the citizens of communist Bulgaria. But interestingly, Kostova ties communist mentality to Alexandra’s own judgments when she and Bobby visit Kurilkov’s mansion. Although Kurilkov lives in the mountains, surrounded by huts that seem to have sprung organically from the surrounding rocks, he has the audacity to impose an ostentatious, alien architecture on the otherwise picturesque landscape:

"This [house] loomed – huge but relentlessly traditional, giant Tudor beams crisscrossing it, balconies jutting off the façade, ten thousand folksy new slates slathered over the roof, an actual tower rising at one end. You could have put twenty of Baba Yana’s little dwelling inside it."

Alexandra then scornfully observes that this mansion was constructed not by hand, but, heaven forbid, by “bulldozers and cranes,” and that the folksy clothing worn by Kurilkov’s doorman “could have been beautiful, but it was brand new, like the house.” Although unacknowledged by Alexandra, her ideas align with communist rhetoric that demonizes rich, foreign influence – the kind of rhetoric that made Stoyan immediately suspicious to authorities simply for having studied in that capitalist Sodom and Gomorrah, Vienna. Harmful ideas, Kostova suggests, burrow themselves into the minds of even the most moral people. And when moral people make destructive choices about the philosophies and leaders they follow, a nation’s future can hang in the balance.

Ultimately, Stoyan and Alexandra’s stories merge in the form of Stoyan’s son, Neven. Both characters imagine Neven to be their salvation, and fittingly, he looms larger as an idea than he does as a character. With his introduction into the action, Kostova fuses the past, present, and future, marking a path for her characters that could lead beyond their sorrow. Memory, she suggests, can preserve pain and suffering, but it can also preserve joy and friendship and the beauty of a mountain at sunrise. The ending rings both lovely and hollow, but the real question is how many readers will make it that far. There’s gorgeous, subtle, tender writing in here, but I wonder how many readers will wade through Alexandra’s sections to find it.

When I was 28, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). About a year later, at a routine check-up, my lung X-ray showed a cloudiness that concerned my rheumatologist. He immediately referred me to a pulmonologist, fearing that I’d developed lymphoma from my RA treatments. After a series of tests, eventually I had to undergo a lung biopsy. [Skip to the end – not cancer, but sarcoidosis.] As I recovered from the procedure, I read a book I had recently picked up in the sales bin at a local bookstore – The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. I devoured the book in about a day and a half. I loved her take on the Dracula mythology, which happens to be one of my favorite mythological topics. When I was sent an ARC of her newest novel, The Shadow Land [due out April 11, 2017], by Random House, I could not wait to tear into the text. 

I will just jump right into this review: I felt the quality of this book fell short of what I’d hoped for, especially after my excitement to have another novel by the author of The Historian. The story is not bad, but it is also not great. The writing certainly is not bad, but it also is not the subtle and tugging language I had expected. I found nothing specific to dislike, but also very little to recommend the book as one people should dedicate time out of their lives to read.

One notable exception: Kostova’s description of music in general, and the playing of a violin in particular, was nearly enough to bring the fictional notes alive in my ears – these several passages were among my favorites in the text, and among the best written in all of the novel.

The most intense scenes in the novel (flashbacks, for the record), often difficult for the writer to craft, were the best written and most powerful sections of the novel. Again, confusion for me as reader, that the more “mundane” moments were not written with equal clarity and beauty. I want a consistent, lovely experience as I read. [That’s the ideal.] A terrible or mediocre experience, acceptable for consistency’s sake. The medley of quality in this text detracted from my experience of the novel – but I will reiterate again, the highs were very good. (Reminding me of The Historian, which was so well written and uniform.)

I did also enjoy the development of characters in this novel, especially the very elderly from the countryside of Bulgaria. They had an honest and genuine feel as characters, nothing contrived. The main two characters, however, sometimes felt forced, as opposed to behaving how they naturally might in any given situation. In fact, the flashbacks and stories throughout the novel resonated much better than the current turns of events in the text.

The ending of the novel also caught my attention – a twist, unexpected but not unbelievable or trite. Very well handled, leaving the reader on a high note as the story slowly comes to a close.

The novel is an odd mix – I like the characters, but never really develop concern for them. The novel is not flat, but also fails to draw the reader into the story in the way a truly great novel does. The suspense of the situation is managed well, but never reaches a level of interactive suspense for the reader. There’s just something missing, a connective dynamic with the text that simply never establishes itself, though most everything about the novel is quite good.

All in all, I would have to say this – The Shadow Land is an enjoyable book, and I would not dissuade anyone from reading it. But The Historian was a far better representation of the author’s ability, and I would recommend that book much more heartily than her new one.

Wow. You just cannot convince me that anyone does it like Elizabeth Kostova and The Shadow Land is no exception.

My TBR stack is wildly out of hand, so when I picked up this book I was slightly daunted by the length. No worries there. I could hardly put it down and curled up happily for the entire weekend. While there wasn't anything paranormal like in The Historian, there was something comforting in her return to Eastern Europe. Her love of Bulgaria really shines through in this book.

While there is definitely a mystery element here, it unfolds slowly and is ultimately both lovely and satisfying. This is the perfect book for a rainy day and a glass of wine.

Note: I received a free digital copy of this book from Ballantine Publishing via NetGalley.

<u>The Shadow Land</u> is my first read from this author and I enjoyed it. The lush language, the sweeping imagery, and distinct characterization were highlights of Kostova's smooth, confident style. It was clear that the author loves Bulgaria and wove its past expertly through the fictional prose while adding a little bit of mysticism and magic. It was an enchanting, lovely read with these in mind.

However, there were some aspects that were not as enjoyable. Unfortunately the book is very easy to put down. I did not find myself being sucked in because of the slow pace. That's not to say that I don't enjoy a slow paced read, it's that this book in particular meanders (which is shown in its length) plot-wise and could have been fixed in editing. Others seem to have liked the protagonist but I found her to be stale and indecisive. The romance angle was also strange to me and seemed quite forced. 

All in all, the writing was beautiful. The scenery was engrossing and the history it touched on was fascinating. Three out of five.

As observed in her bestselling novel, The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova knows how to create deeply rich settings for her novels. This time, the place is Bulgaria, a country personally quite dear to the author. Haunted by the disappearance of her brother, American Alexandra Boyd accepts a teaching position in Sofia, the country’s capital. Upon her arrival, she meets an elderly couple, accompanied by a handsome dark man, and while helping them into a taxi, she accidentally acquires one of their bags. It contains an intricately carved box of human ashes. The Shadow Land is a story in two parts: Alexandra’s quest to return the box to its original keepers, which often seems to be one continuous car trip, and a richer, deeper story or rather history of Stefan Lazarov, the man whose life forms the basis for this novel. 

When The Shadow Land concentrates on Lazarov’s story and the political oppression in Bulgaria during the Communist reign, I feel it is a very strong and moving read. Stefan Lazarov is a powerful character; I particularly love the stories he constructs in his head to survive the camp. Momo is a realistic and frightening villain. It’s when the story turns to present day that I struggle. The only character who really interests me is Bobby, the poet/taxi driver, and I was sad to see him fade away at the end. And the disappearance of Jake, Alexandra’s brother, which plays a rather significant part at the beginning, also seems to lose momentum as the novel progresses. To me it reads as though more effort was put into writing one section of the book than in the other. 

That said, taken as a whole, The Shadow Land is a good novel. Stefan Lazarov’s story rings true and Bulgaria, a country that suffered much in the 1940s and 1950s under Soviet rule, is beautifully portrayed by Elizabeth Kostova.

This pains me to write this, but I am 70% in to The Shadow Land and I am not finishing it. I had such high hopes going in as I absolutely loved The Historian but try as I might, I can not get into this story at all.   I was initially intrigued when I read the premise – an American tourist kindly helps a family load their taxi as they are departing their hotel and through an accidental mix up finds herself with one of their bags containing an urn of ashes. She sets off to return the urn to them and in the process unravels the secrets of the man’s identity while being pursued and threatened by unknown people who seem to want the ashes for themselves.  The story started off fairly well, the writing is lush and Kostova’s gorgeous descriptions made me feel like I was alongside Alexandra taking in the sights of Bulgaria.   I had hoped that the slow build up in the plot was leading to something intriguing and mysterious.  However, the story is moving at a snail’s pace and even now at 70% in, not much is happening other than traveling by taxi to various destinations with no luck in the search of the mystery family.  I am still not sure why these ashes are so important or what has become of the family that Alexandra encountered at the beginning of the story but I am not invested enough in the plot line to keep going.  2 stars since I am not finishing it.   Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

The actual rating for this book was 3 1/2 stars.
First I have to thank Netgalley for giving me the chance to review this book that is not coming out till a couple of months from now. One of the main issues I had with this book started as soon as I began to read it , the catalyst that launches the plot of this book is not believable at all and every part that follows from there on is tainted by this lack of cohesion at the begging of the book. That aside, the book gets better from then on but it is not a fast paced book, there are lot of mentions about the setting (Bulgaria and Vienna) which I liked (I have a soft spot for Eastern Europe as a setting in any book) , but there are also moments between the 2 main characters that deal with post war politics and the history of communism in the lower countries which can get a little bit boring . The conclusion is satisfactory because it ties all the loose ends in the story , I just wished it had a strong beginning so I could bump its rating , but alas it did not . Hopefully some of these issues will be fixed in the final edition.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine for the ARC of "The Shadow Land" by Elizabeth Kostova for my honest review. The genres for this novel are Historical Fiction, General Fiction(Adult) and Literary Fiction. I like the way Elizabeth Kostova describes the landscapes of Bulgaria, and contrasts between the beauty of mountains and water , and the devastating destruction of buildings and land through various historical regimes in history. I am impressed that the author is so comfortable writing about Bulgaria  where she lives, and has done much research into the history of the country.
  Alexandra Boyd, an American is in Bulgaria, to escape the guilt  of her brother's accidental death. Alexandra helps an elderly couple and their son coming out of a hotel, and in the process finds that she has mistakenly taken some of their luggage. Alexandra notices that in their luggage is a beautifully ornate and decorated wooden box. Upon opening it, she notices that there are ashes and realizes that this is an urn.Her taxi-cab driver Aspurah Iliev,"Bobby" notices her distress and tries to help her find the family.
  Alexandra goes to the police and discovers that  the ashes belong to the diseased  Stoyan Lazarov.a once prominent violinist. The police give her an address where the family might be.
   Alexandra and Bobby start on a dangerous adventure seeking out the family to return the ashes. There are warnings,threats, and dead people. The characters are complex and complicated.  
  It seems that Stoyan Lazarov has had an interesting  and tortured life, and the author writes a timeline in the past and present and shows how the different regimes in power are reflected.  Someone wants that urn and is willing to kill for it. The author writes about good and evil, despair and hope.
  I enjoyed this intriguing and descriptive novel, and would recommend this. Elizabeth Kostova writes and describes her country beautifully.

I just read every single word in this book, and I can honestly say the book would have been much better without 80,000 of them. I knew that would be the case though. Kostova's novels tend to be on the overly wordy side. But, for the love of literature, can someone PLEASE do a serious slash and burn on this one. I get that the story is complex, layered with historical events and the present, but really, it is possible for there to be too much of a good thing. In The Shadow Land, unfortunately that is the situation. There is just too dang much information for it to remain an engaging story. 

I'll give you the first third though. I think that had to do with my wanting to believe that I'd like it as I did The Historian, as much as it did exceptional writing skills. After that 1/3 mark though, I was struggling. I still read every word, but man, there were moments where I genuinely thought academic texts might be more enjoyable -- just to get a break from the massive information download that's going on here.

So despite the setting, storyline, and exceptional writing, I am very sorry to say that I just did not enjoy this one as much as I hoped or wanted to. If there was a condensed version, I have to say that would probably be a five-star read in my book. As this one remains though, I just can't go higher.

This is the second book from Elizabeth Kostova that I have read. I can give it basically the same review as the Swan Thieves.  I loved the story, it was beautiful. The characters were so interesting that I immediately became interested in their story.

However, the book needs some pruning. It is overly descriptive, to the point that I found that it slowed the pace so substantially that I had to put the book down and go back (continually) when I had more energy.  I have never peeked at the last chapter of any book but I came seconds away with this. I wanted to know what happened with the urn but another in depth exhortation of the mountains or the open sores on a hand made it somewhat daunting.
 
A wonderful and sad story that I am glad to have read.

The Shadow Lands is a novel that you won’t easily forget. The reader follows Alexandra Boyd and her Bulgarian cabbie friend as they drive around Bulgaria, trying to find the people who belonged to the urn that Alexandra accidentally took. As they search for Stoyan Lazarov’s family, she learns about his tragic background and discovers that some secrets are very dangerous and people will do anything to keep them from being discovered.

******************************************************

I couldn’t get enough of this book. The way it was written, the cover, where the book was set, the storylines, the perfect blending of past and present and the right amount of mystery was what kept me reading until late in the night. I couldn’t put it down, it was that good!!

Alexandra was such a tragic figure in the beginning of the book. The loss of her brother was huge and the toll it took on her and her family was very tragic. But I also thought she was a little too trusting. I mean, after meeting the Lazarov family and accidentally taking the urn, she starts to galavant around the country with Bobby. All I could think about was that she was going to become another statistic at some point in the book. So glad that didn’t happen.

I actually really liked Bobby even though he did come across as a very secretive man. He was the first friend that Alexandra had and he was good to her. He was a bit condescending about American’s though (but I think most of the world is….lol).

What I really liked was when the book flashed back to Stoyan Lazarov and told his story. It was fascinating look at how the communists dealt with perceived criminals (real and those in the wrong place at the wrong time like Stoyan). I had chills reading about that because of the similarities to Hitler’s concentrations camps in World War 2. Stalin was just as bad as Hitler. Just as bad :(.

To my recollection, I haven’t read a book that is set entirely in Bulgaria. I was fascinated by the customs, by its history (both good and bad) and just the atmosphere the book had while I was reading it. Again, something I couldn’t get enough of and I think, once my kids are grown, that I might have to take a trip there.

The end of the book was pretty good. The storylines were married beautifully together and the book ended with a what I thought was a HEA.

How many stars will I give The Shadow Land: 4

Why: A great, immersive book that took me from present day Bulgaria to the past and back effortlessly. I couldn’t read enough of this book. I do wish that a small glossary was included with the meanings of the Bulgarian words. My Kindle’s dictionary did not recognize the words (and didn’t have an option for Bulgarian)….lol. Also, I was left wondering about Alexandra’s scar. It was mentioned quite often and I don’t remember seeing and explanation about how and why she got it.

Will I reread: Yes

Will I recommend to family and friends: Yes

Age range: Late Teen

Why: Mild violence.

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**

When Alexandra Boyd was a young girl her brother disappeared.  His body was never found, and her family never got closure.  The experience and the aftermath have shaped Alexandra’s life.  To help assuage her guilt, she decides to become an English teacher in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Why Bulgaria?  When she and her brother played the atlas game, it was his very favorite country.  Maybe by going there, she will feel a deeper connection to his lost spirit.

	Travel is tiring, and Alexandra is not at her best when she arrives.  Her driver is not any help, she asks for her hostel, he takes her to a hotel.  While she is trying to figure out what to do, she has a casual encounter with an elderly couple.  Later she figures out that she has accidently added one of their cases to her luggage.  Inside is a magnificent carved box containing a funerary urn, engraved with the name Stoyan Lazarov.  Somehow, Alexandra must find the elderly couple and rectify her mistake.

	Most people would have left it with the police or in the care of the hotel.  Alexandra, however, still harbors a deep-seated pain over her last encounter with her brother, and the way she walked away from him.  Even though Stoyan is just a pile of ashes, she cannot leave him behind; she must be the one to reunite him with his family.  They must have the closure that she never did.

	This simple act leads to a grand tour around Bulgaria.  As she follows up each clue to the whereabouts of Stoyan’s missing family, she gets deeper and deeper into the mystery of his life.  The action shifts back and forth from Alexandra’s present into Stoyan’s past.  With each shift, we learn more about the horror and tragedy of Communist Bulgaria and Alexandra gets closer and closer to absolution.

	This book is nothing like Kostova’s debut novel The Historian.  There are no vampires and no mysticism.  While this may disappoint some readers, The Shadow Land stands firmly on its own.  It is a story of loss, repentance and the importance of family.  The pace is slow, there are no big reveals, but the pieces come together seamlessly.  Stoyan’s story is a powerful reminder of the challenges of living in an occupied country during wartime.  This book is challenging, intellectual and engrossing.  The characters are genuine, multi-layered and for the most part eminently likable.  I recommend it to readers who enjoy a novel with a slower pace and greater depth.

Well, that was lovely.

As soon as I started this novel, I knew I was going to love it. The way Elizabeth Kostova's flawless writing paints an image in your mind is absolutely remarkable. Honestly, I enjoyed nearly every moment of this book. I enjoyed the history, the rare but exhilarating thriller scenes, the constant mystery, and even the slow-burning romance. Ah, this was quite an enjoyable read.

Some people might compare this novel to The Historian, but not me. To put it simply, I didn't enjoy that novel as much, which is why I'm really glad I gave this book a chance - even though I didn't have the greatest success with her novels prior. And who knows? Maybe I'll even go back and re-read The Historian because of how amazing this story was. Honestly - I'm still in awe.

Another thing I might add is, that even though this was beautiful - it's certainly not for everyone. If you don't enjoy books with "little action" and a "slow burn" then, this isn't for you. But even still, I dare you to give it a chance. It might just be one of my favorite Historical Fiction novel I've read recently.

But now...I just have to wait for the release date, so I can have the physical copy of the book!

Lastly, thank you to Ballantine Books for giving me the opportunity to review this.

I received a free electronic copy of this historical novel from Netgalley, Elizabeth Kostova, and Ballentine Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all, for sharing your hard work with me. 

I had to keep reminding myself of the years this tale covers - all after the end of World War Two, in Bulgaria. These were atrocities one wants to put to the blame of Hitler and the Nazi troops - but no. Revolution - years and years of revolution and the effect of same on the general populace. It was a book I had a hard time putting down. And the first thing I did when I finished The Shadow Land was order copies of Kostova's other novels. This is an author I will follow. This was a book that will live in my brain for a long time to come.

Alexandra Boyd arrives in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2008 to accept a teaching position. She feels that a change of scenery would help her heal and forgive herself for her big brother’s accidental death years earlier.
Upon realizing that the taxi has dropped her off at the wrong hotel, Alexandra accidently takes a piece of luggage that contains an urn with the ashes of someone. A taxi driver and a stray dog join her in her quest to return the sentimental contents.
Thus begins the journey of Alexandra thru a beautifully described Bulgaria. The color and energy given to paint the settings and people help the reader envision a country they’ve never toured. Elizabeth Kostova does an excellent job of creating the stage.
The weakness comes in the plot. Part of the letdown is due to the book’s description of suspense and danger. Actually, neither of these exists. The plot as I see it is a subtle yet heartbreaking description of what it was like to live in a country struggling from a political takeover.
I’m reluctant to give this book three stars because I have so much respect for Elizabeth Kostova. Her writing ability and talent is beautiful; I enjoyed her earlier book, The Historian, very much. But this read never really captured me. I think if someone went in with the understanding that this is a human drama piece and not suspense and danger, that preface may help.
(I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you to Ballentine Books and NetGalley for making it available.)

Alexandra Boyd is a woman in her mid-20's from the Blue Ridge Mountains who is still struggling, a decade later, to put the death of her brother and her guilt, behind her. She has traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, a place her dreamed of to teach English and to try and overcome her loss.Just as she arrives, she runs into an elderly couple and a young man who she feels an instant connection with. She suddenly finds that she has accidentally taken one of their bags containing the ashes of Stoyan Lazarov. With the help and friendship of an unlikely taxi driver who goes by the name Bobby, we follow Alexandra as she tries to find the family to return the ashes. Along the way, we uncover with her the story of an extraordinary man and life, full of love, music and hardship. We follow Stoyan and learn how love and music truly saved him. It is a beautiful story filled with hope, despite the darkness of portions of his life.

There was a ,lot to admire and enjoy about this sweeping novel set in Bulgaria, from pre WWII to the present. I really enjoyed the setting as this is an area of Europe little known to me (I learned that the author is married to a Bulgarian and has lived there for years).   I was immeidiatley  caught up in the dual storylines - the present day drama involving a young American visitor Alexandra and a taxi driver Bobby and the story of SToyan Lazaro a violinist from Sofia and his family and friends - and the ways these stories intersect. Kostovs, who many will remember  from her huge hit The Historian, draws believable and compelling characters and settings. I was enchanted by her descriptions of the Bulgarian landscapes and the complex characters she developed. I also learned a lot about the history of Bulgaria in the 20rh century which was tragic in many ways. I especially liked the dynamics of the relationship she developed between Bobby and Alexandra and the dog they '"adopt" along the way who seems as real as any of the human characters in this novel. 
The reselling of the horrors of Bulgarian labor camps was quite disturbing and individualized through Stoyan's struggles. 
This is a very well written, compelling novel that will most certainly enlighten you about  post WWII history you probably knew little of and a people who are honest, forthright and welcoming.