I have loved every word Khaled Hoseeini has put to paper. I have waited a long time for this novel. I have held my breath as I opened the very first page of this book and read the first line. I think I might have held that breath the entire first chapter….but as I finished that first chapter, I could only set the book down, breathe deep, sigh contentedly, and smile….yes, the wait had been worth it! As each chapter went on my feelings of pure bliss only grew. I was like the fat cat that had just ate that robin in the garden and was now basking in the sun feeling full, clean, and oh so satisfied. Life could be no better…..I was simply put…in a word…giddy……

Then I hit chapter 5……and my world changed…..

This is hard one to review. This book is broken into 9 chapters. All of them are lengthy…some of them are LONG…..They are told by different characters of the novel. They go back in history and forward in history….I have to say, chapters 1 – 4….they were….pure bliss for me….I loved every single word of them. I think I’ve reread the first two chapters 3 times each already. Chapters three and four have been scanned over multiply times….These chapters had everything I look for in writing. Mystery. Fables. Devotion. Regret. Heartache. Betrayal. Hopelessness. and a beauty that simply made me ache inside….I honestly found it hard to move beyond to the next chapters, it was just THAT beautiful. If this book had stayed on track from those chapters, it would have made it to my all time favorite list.

However, something strange happened at chapter 5 and I am still not sure why Hosseini changed direction. It was still great writing. It was still interesting. But the enchantment for me was gone. It was just good writing. The magic was left out…the interweaving of all the elements of the first part of the novel were laid off to the side. We were introduced to more stories. Yes, the narrators of these stories were all related to the main story, but not a part of it. How do I explain….I almost felt like I was reading something along the lines of 6 degrees of separation. I had no problem following along, I just was left wondering why is Hosseini including these narrators? Why are their stories included? That was it for me…they were not part of the story I feel in love with…they were their own stories. Yes, they were connected…but oh so different. They added nothing to the mystery. The added nothing to the enchantment of the first part of the novel. they were simply fillers….The ones that were important to the story were visited way too late in life to really fill in the part of their history I yearned to know of….Others were never revisited at all….Hosseini wrote a novel in the beginning that demanded I become invested in the characters and then completely ignored my need for more! Confused? I was too. Once you read the book, you will hopefully understand what I mean…..I personally feel like Hosseini had too wide a focus on this book. Perhaps if it were 900 plus pages long (YES! I would love to read a Hosseini book that long!) all of the stories could have been expanded upon and I would have felt that magic throughout the book…as it is, I simply felt like the first part was what the novel should have stayed true to and the rest just felt like an outline/shell of an unrelated story…..again, yes, I know they were all connected and I saw the connection…I just didn’t *feel* that connection….

this book left me so thrilled with its words and it’s story…yet surprisingly empty and let down at the same time…..

~UraniaBuy it now And the Mountains Echoed