All The Light We Cannot See

I picked this book up from the charity shop. I'd heard of All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr but didn't really know what to expect.

"' Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.'

For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History. The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the Nazis invade Paris. And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth.

In this magnificent, deeply moving novel, the stories of Marie-Laure and Werner illuminate the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another."

I've read many books, some based on truth and others works of fiction, set around the Second World War, yet this one is different in that it's based on a totally different perspective, that of a young blind girl in France and a young boy in Germany. The story takes us on a journey through Europe at a time when atrocities are being committed and running alongside is the tale of The Sea of Flames, a diamond with magical powers.

There's no doubt that that this is a "deeply moving novel" but, for me, it lacks that something which I can't put my finger on. The story was good, I liked those characters I was supposed to bond with and disliked immensely those I was not, so I'm not sure what else the author could have done to make me enjoy this book more. Perhaps it was the writing style, I really don't know, however, I would definitely suggest reading it yourself and making up your own mind. It's had rave reviews and was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015.