A haunting tale of passion, loss, and redemption, The Paper Swan is a darkly intense yet heartwarming love story, textured with grit, intrigue, and suspense. Please note: This is NOT a love triangle.
5 EMOTIONAL STARS.
TRIGGER WARNING: Kidnapping, abuse, murder, violence.
I promise you, you haven't read anything like this before. I was speechless from page one. It's unique. It's real. It will blow your mind.
We start with typical spoiled rich girl. She has the perfect life, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect family. She wears the right clothes, says the right things and attends the right events. Until someone puts a gun against her head.
She prays and the man decides to let her live... with him as her captor.
We get some flashbacks, bittersweet snippets at what life was like for Skye, our heroine, and how she fell in love with her childhood best friend.
“You don’t always get the treasure by holding on. Sometimes the magic happens when you let go.”
It took me a long time to write this review. This book deserves to be a NY Times bestseller. It's THAT good. It's THAT fesh. It's THAT innovative. It was gripping and it made you scared and excited at the same time. It made you feel.
“In the grand scheme of things, we do the best we can, all of us, and we make up our stories as we go along; we write them and direct them and project them into the world. And sometimes we get other people’s stories, and sometimes we don’t, but always there is a story behind a story behind a story, linked in a chain that we can only see a small part of, because it’s there when we’re born and it continues after we’re gone. And who can comprehend all of it in one lifetime?”
The places, the characters, the dialogue, EVERYTHING was spot on. Each and every single word seemed realistic, like I could almost touch it. I was right there with Skye, when she was scared and when she was panicking. When she was laughing and when she was crying.
“How deluded we become when we start believing that everything in the world is about us. How hard we work to make things fit into our made-up theories. How blindly we follow our worked-up emotions, the good, the bad and the ugly.”
All the characters were morally gray, and all of them had to make choices not everyone would approve of. They did them and they suffered the consequences, they accepted their fate and the things they'd done. They weren't perfect, but that's what made them so easy to love.
“It’s all fucked up, Rafael. There are no good guys or bad guys. Everyone has a reason.”
The pace was great, and the prose was incredible. Leylah knows how to write, and her style is delicate and lovely. Even the sexy scenes were done with grace.
“We are sand and rock and water and sky, anchors on ships and sails in the wind. We are a journey to a destination that shifts every time we dream or fall or keep or weep. We are stars with flaws that still sparkle and shine. We always strive, always want, always have more questions than answers, but there are moments like these, full of magic and contentment, when souls get a glimpse of the divine and quite simply, lose their breath.”
This book is complex, with so many unexpected turns. I could only guess a few plot twists, because they were so many that my mind couldn't keep up with all of them.
“It’s not over, you know. It never has been,” he said. “Whether you say yes or no, you will always be my forever.”
You will end up loving Damian, our antihero, as much as you hate him, and you will fall for him as Skye does.
“Just sitting here thinking how far you’ve come, and I’m overwhelmed with how much I love you.”
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