I have read a few books by Victoria Hislop and this book appealed because Cyprus is a country we have visited numerous times. A couple of these times we went to Nicosia, looking across the wire fence and also Kokkina. It was eerie then, I can’t even imagine what it was like to go through it.
The first half of the novel is mainly set in a new hotel that accommodates the very wealthy. The reader gets to know three of the main characters very well and the others are present in the background. They are less powerful but in every single way much more likeable than the hotel owners, Savvas and Aphroditi, and the nightclub manager Markos.
It was the second half that interested me more. When circumstances caused the hotels to close and the families to flee. Some who were enemies despite never meeting because of the war. Seeing how they were forced to accept differences and being able to accept each other was humbling.
There weren’t many characters to like in the novel. The powers games and manipulation were evident from those mentioned earlier and despite the tragic events it was hard to feel sympathy. However Hüseyin was a character who developed a lot as the novel progressed and I had a lot of admiration for him. Certain aspects of another character I had forgotten about but reading his thoughts reminded me that not everything was as it appeared.
This novel wasn’t entirely as I expected it to be, I would have liked to read about the invasion and the attempts to rebuild a life than the affluent hotel industry but I still enjoyed it.