Sara and Lejla are key people in each other's life. They drift apart and are brought back together on a road trip from Bosnia to Vienna in hopes to find Lejla's brother that most assume is deceased. A roadtrip is the perfect senario to rehash old disagreements and conflicts, right? Well, that is what happens. This is a story about love, reflection, forgiveness, resentment and so much more. I know very little about Bosnia and I feel I learned a good deal from this book. I love books that examine the complexities of relationships. This was done well!

Thank you Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for this advance listener copy in exchange for my honest review.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I enjoy books with underlying social commentary but I found this one to be very confusing. The jumping back and forth from the past to the present ended up leading to a jumbled mess. I really don't like stories told in the second person and this one jumped back and forth between first person and second person and it just didn't work for me.

In this story we meet Sara and Lelja, two childhood friends who lost touch in their adult years. They reunite for a road trip across their home country of Bosnia, in search of Lejla's brother, who is presumed dead by everyone but Sara and Lelja.

I couldn't relate to the characters and ended up not caring about them.or their journey. I didn't care for the lackluster conclusion and I'm a little bit confused as to what even happened. I just didn't enjoy the writing style or the narrator. This may be an enjoyable story to others, just not to me.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* really wanted to and thought id like this book more than i did, maybe because ive had too many friends like that maybe just because it felt very long but i wouldnt reread

This book was an interesting look at friendship, different phases in our lives, and what the true foundations of a lasting relationship are. With time and distance both playing a factor readers find themselves contemplating exactly who these characters are, whether they truly exist or are rather a figment of one’s imagination, and what importance each one plays. While the time hopping didn’t bother me the lack of connection between the different realities may leave readers feeling confused and disinterested.

Well the writing is beautiful I just couldn’t get into the flow of this book.

⭐️⭐️✨2.5 stars with a 14+ rating

Synopsis: It has been 12 years since Lejla and Sara have spoken. They were childhood friends that grew apart over the years. Lejla's brother Arman was presumed dead at the end of the Bosnian War. Lejla and Sara are the only two people who believe he is still alive. So when Lejla calls Sara, who is currently living happily in Dublin, letting her know that she thinks her brother is in Vienna, Sara immediately books a ticket to Bosnia. Through the road trip from Bosnia to Vienna, the two discover that they have forever been intrinsically linked, however, they have a very different understanding of their past and what has led them to grow apart.

Thoughts:
This book takes a deep dive into the intricacies of female friendships. This is the second book in a row that I have read where a misunderstanding, different interpretation of events, or half-memories have ruined friendships. There are a lot of valuable lessons in what Lejla and Sara go through on this road trip. Lejla and Sara are also forced to explore other things that factored into their friendship, including religion, different social classes, different upbringings, various traumas, etc. This book also discusses the culture and tumultuous recent history of Bosnia, including the Bosnian War, in-depth.
I absolutely recommend this book.

Not your typical type of book. One could look at the characters as being basic but I think if you delve deeper you can find yourself really questioning if there are additional layers to the psychology of the characters that maybe you weren’t expecting. It had me examining their actions, interactions, thoughts and behaviors in a more complex way. There were quite a few times where I wondered if some characters were actually present or just part of another characters psyche and didn’t exist to anyone outside of that character. Can’t wait to see feedback about this book from others.

The interesting characters in this novel are eclipsed only by the interesting settings. A very interesting read.

Sara hasn't heard from her childhood best friend Lejla is 12 years. However, when Lejla calls Sara, asking her to come back to Bosnia for a road trip to find Lejla's brother, Sara can't say no. During their trip, Sara is forced to confront her memories of their childhood and the different lives they lived.

Umm, what on earth did I just listen to? The language was beautiful, but I'm not sure what to make of the story. I have read and loved a lot of novels with time jumping, but I struggled to keep the thread of this story as it moved between present and past. I did not realize until after reading the book that it was made to have similarities to Alice in Wonderland, and I am not an Alice fan; maybe I wouldn't have picked up this book had I realized beforehand. I am obviously in the minority, though, so don't let my view on the book stop you from checking it out.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

Catch the Rabbit is a story of a friendship across countries and time. It questions how people change in a relationship and how the foundational myths undergirding an entire friendship may be perceived wildly different. I loved the brief window in to the Balkans and the lies we tell to overcome trauma. Overall, a deep sense of melancholy pervades much of the story and you can't help but feel for these people whose home country chewed them up and spit them out.

I received an ALC of this book via #NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Catch the Rabbit originally debuted in 2019 but was re-released in June, translated to English.

<b>Catch the Rabbit is the winner of the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature. </b>

Synopsis: It has been 12 years since Lejla and Sara have spoken. They were childhood friends that grew apart over the years. Lejla's brother Arman was presumed dead at the end of the Bosnian War. Lejla and Sara are the only two people who believe he is still alive. So when Lejla calls Sara, who is currently living happily in Dublin, letting her know that she thinks her brother is in Vienna, Sara immediately books a ticket to Bosnia. Through the road trip from Bosnia to Vienna, the two discover that they have forever been intrinsically linked, however, they have a very different understanding of their past and what has led them to grow apart.

Thoughts:
This book takes a deep dive into the intricacies of female friendships. This is the second book in a row that I have read where a misunderstanding, different interpretation of events, or half-memories have ruined friendships. There are a lot of valuable lessons in what Lejla and Sara go through on this road trip. Lejla and Sara are also forced to explore other things that factored into their friendship, including religion, different social classes, different upbringings, various traumas, etc. This book also discusses the culture and tumultuous recent history of Bosnia, including the Bosnian War, in-depth.
I absolutely recommend this book.

I unfortunately cannot review this title because the audio recording of Catch the Rabbit is too poor to listen to. The narrator sounds like she is in a tin box and it is very graining on the ears.

I have heard great things about this book and would love to review it properly.

This book was a wonderful surprise. With no expectation going in and not sure even of the genre of the book, I was swept up in this story about friendship and memory, and about the narratives we tell ourselves and the characters we create in our lives. I listened to this book as an audiobook but it's the kind of book where I found myself really wanting to have in print, so I could go back over particularly beautiful passages and re-read them. There is definitely poetry in this prose. Lana Bastasic is a writer's writer, her turns of phrase and use of language to evoke emotion is brilliant. The ending lands softly but powerfully and brings the story full circle in a way that I'll be thinking about for a while. This is a gorgeous novel, don't miss it!

Certainly interesting, though at times meandering. I kept hoping for something to really grab me, but I feel like this story (crazy childhood friend coming back into relatively plain main characters life for adventure) has been told before and there wasn't enough of a spin on it to pop for me.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Catch the Rabbit is a captivating story about the struggles of life and growing up. When Sara receives a phone call from her old friend, she is thrust back into memories and forced to revisit the past. The story examines how friendships grow and change. The plot is similar to Alice in Wonderland when Sara is pulled back to Bosnia and a post war setting. The narrator does a wonderful job telling the story of the two girls and how each lives their own lives, but the memories they share will always be entwined dependent on how they view them.

I’m not completely sure that I understood this book but what I did, seemed very deep and complex (that could be why I didn’t understand it all) It’s a moving story about women who met in school and then went on with their lives separately until one day out of the blue Leila calls Sara to help her get to her brother in Vienna, who had disappeared during wartime in Bosnia. So, after 20 years, Sara agrees to leave her life and boyfriend in Dublin and help Leila track down Armin in Vienna.
During their road trip, Leila and Sara reflect on their past together and find that their memories of their relationship are very different and they struggle to figure out whose version is the truth. Especially their prom night when they lost their virginity. Their real relationship is very dark and complicated, especially because Sara had a crush on Leila’s brother when they were kids and Leila did everything she could to keep them apart, which Sara resented over the years. But what caught my attention the most is how desperately Sara seemed to want to be Leila despite everything and it made me question whether Sara’s memory could be trusted if she wanted to become someone whom she had such a roller coaster relationship with.
Overall, I enjoyed the narration of the story and the way it felt like a story within a story. The accents were good but not overdone and the narrator was clear and easy to understand.
Thanks to Picador and Netgalley for this Arc in exchange for my review.

What do I say about Catch the rabbit was a audiobook narrated by Tanya Cubric?
What the heck did I just read? What…. Wait, what?
This was a strange friendship between two girls that had the feel of a curse or a twisted kindness. Disjointed the story revealed critical times and maybe important times of their friendship. I couldn’t really tell. It was all sort of a mystery. Listen I wondered about the authors thought process. It felt like she shared every single thought in her mind. The relationship was heavy, toxic, and disturbingly real.
It felt like every thought and regret was put out their with weird things thrown in. I didn’t really understand it. Anybody?
Thanks Dreamscape Media via Netgalley.