REVIEW: Tatiana and Alexander (#2 Tatiana and Alexander Trilogy) by Paullina Simons

5+ Stars!!!

“Where did they teach you how to live after you’d lost it all? Who taught you how to go on after you had lost everything?” - Tatiana

This song, “My Love” by Lene Marlin (link below), is my theme song for this second book in the Tatiana and Alexander trilogy. 

The haunting voice and the lyrics…How my heart aches as I listen to it…Especially because every time I listen to it, now, it will forever remind me of Tatiana and Alexander’s achingly, hauntingly beautiful love story, that is not only etched into my heart, but my whole body. My chest aches, my eyes water, my breath catches, my skin feels tight, sighs escape...I can’t help but want to cry and sigh whenever I think of these two. And those of you who have EXPERIENCED and LOVED this trilogy, I believe you KNOW what I’m talking about. Don’t you?

It has taken me so long to write my review for Tatiana and Alexander - over a year - because I was so CONSUMED with wanting to read the last book, The Summer Garden, that I just couldn’t to stop to review this one.

Also, I’ve really struggled with how to write a review for this one without spoiling the book for anyone who hasn’t read the first. Strangely, now that I’m re-reading The Bronze Horseman, I’m ready to try.

I started this second book armed with the quote below:

"If it were not for hope, the heart would break." ~ Thomas Fuller

This quote helped me to be able to breathe when I first started this book, after all I went through with Tatiana and Alexander in The Bronze Horseman. I hugged my hope for Tatiana and Alexander tight. Because of this, I found I was able to breathe in the first couple hundred pages, but then …as I read on, my chest grew tighter and tighter…and tighter. I ACHED. I was RAW. But I kept clutching on to that hope. My heart still broke, but it was also healed.

Without any plot spoilers I will say, though, that you will learn about both Alexander’s and Tatiana’s lives before they met each other through flashbacks. You’ll also discover some additional things about scenes in the first book. I really appreciated seeing scenes from The Bronze Horseman from Alexander’s perspective as I was longing for that in the first book. You will understand just how momentous that scene on the street, when Alexander sees Tatiana for the first time in her white dress with red roses, eating an ice cream, really was for Alexander.

Alexander and Tatiana are the embodiment of courage, strength, determination, and an enduring, epic love, for me.

""Kiss my forehead".
She obeys.
"Kiss my lips".
She obeys. And obeys.
"Tania…"
"Shh."
"Can't you see I'm breaking?"
"Ah," she says, "You're still in one piece then."

I cannot promise you that you’ll be in one piece when you read this. In fact, if you have the experience I did, you’ll be shattered. But I do wish you what I also experienced, which is Hope and Love - the excruciating loss of hope and love…and the heart bursting regaining of hope and love... so INTENSE that you’ll never be the same.

This is not just a “read”. It is an EXPERIENCE. I really can’t explain it any other way!

Orbeli!!! What does it mean? It means so much. And, well, you’ll just have to experience it for yourself.

One of my favourite quotes from this book and which gives the title of the last book, The Summer Garden, such meaning:

“There is one moment, a moment in eternity. Before we find out the truth about one another. That simple moment is the one that propels us through life – what we felt at the very edge of our future, standing over the abyss, before we knew for sure we loved. Before we knew for sure we loved forever. …

Before all that, you and I walked through The Summer Garden, and once in a while my bare arm touched your arm, and once in a while you spoke and that gave me an excuse to look up into your face, into your laughing eyes, to catch a glimpse of your mouth and I, who had never been touched, tried to imagine what it might be like to have your mouth touch me. Falling in love with you in The Summer Garden in the white nights of Leningrad is the moment that propels me through life.”

P.S. Tissues required.

P.P.S. These books are not for everyone, but they are precious keepers for me and many others who have been captivated by Alexander and Tatiana's story.

~*~*~*~

13 January 2012, Edited to add:

Oh, my. *sniffles* It feels like fate. The day after I finally write my review for Tatiana and Alexander, I come across this haunting song which is absolutely PERFECT for this book! Just PERFECT. This song makes me want to weep, as I did with this book.

"If I Could Be Where You Are" by Enya:

Reading Order:

1. The Bronze Horseman - My Review Here
2. Tatiana and Alexander ( also titled "The Bridge to Holy Cross", in some editions)
3. The Summer Graden – To be reviewed.

Credits:

- My Alexander – Henry Cavill
- My Tatiana – Teresa Palmer

REVIEW: The Bronze Horsemen (#1, Tatiana & Alexander) by Paullina Simons

 5+ Stars!!!  - (Read in November 2010)

"He wanted to explain but felt shattered. He was shattered." - Yes, I know, Alexander. Me, too. Review to follow when I feel less shattered. On to Book 2!!

..............................

12+ Hours later….

Okay, I figure there is NO WAY I can ever do this book justice, so, I just need to pour out this “review” now, and hopefully in the release of my swirling thoughts and emotions I’m not too nonsensical.

Firstly, I would like to THANK my Goodreads friends, Viola and Quinn, for recommending this book to me, and to thank them and other Goodreads friends (Catherine, Sans, MaldivianBookReviewer and Zosia) for giving me some "emotional support" (knowingly and unknowingly) as I read this. *HUGS* Why did I need “emotional support”, you say? Well…

Viola and Quinn told me it would be “heart-wrenching” but that didn’t even begin to cover what I (and I'm sure they) felt reading it. How can I possibly convey the sweet agony of this ACHINGLY beautiful, evocative and EPIC love story? I can honestly say I have NEVER FELT SO MUCH reading a book before!! In fact, there were moments when I wanted to hurl the book against the wall because I felt so strongly…and I have never felt that urge before. 

Have you ever read a story that so CAPTURED you, that even as you put it down, the emotions it evoked in you stuck with you all throughout the day, until you could return to it again and were sucked in even MORE? Have you ever read a story that stole your breath away, made your heart feel like it was being twisted into a pretzel, and kept squeezing until you felt…SHATTERED? And yet it also filled your heart to bursting with a love so beautiful it brought tears to your eyes? Have you ever read a story that made you FEEL SO MUCH, that it felt like it was TOO MUCH - too much longing, too much pain, too much anger, too much love - and you needed breaks from it, while also feeling COMPELLED to keep reading, and you actually thought: "HOW CAN I SURVIVE THIS BOOK?!?!" Have you ever read a story of a love so INTENSE and CONSUMING, that it transcends the pages it is written on and etches itself into your heart?

The Bronze Horseman was such a story, for me!

Viola and Quinn told me it would be “heart-wrenching” but that didn’t even begin to cover what I (and I'm sure they) felt reading it. How can I possibly convey the sweet agony of this achingly beautiful, evocative and EPIC love story? I can honestly say I have NEVER FELT SO MUCH reading a book before!! In fact, there were moments when I wanted to hurl the book against the wall because I felt so strongly…and I have never felt that urge before. 

The Bronze Horseman begins on 22 June 1941 in Leningrad, when war is declared between the Soviet Union and Germany. A 17-year-old girl named Tatiana is sent out to buy food supplies by her father. As she sits in her white dress with red roses, at the bus stop, eating her favourite crème brulée ice cream, her eyes meet those of a young soldier named Alexander Belov, who is standing across the street.

“It was a perfect day. For five minutes there was no war, and it was just a glorious Sunday in a Leningrad June.

When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.
….
Tatiana normally would have glanced past him down the street and moved on, except that this soldier was standing across the street and staring at her with an expression Tatiana had never seen before. She stopped eating her ice cream.

Her side of the street was already in the shade, but the side where he stood swam in the northern afternoon light. Tatiana stared back at him for just a moment, and in the moment of looking into his face, something moved inside her; moved she would have liked to say imperceptibly, but that wasn’t quite the case. It was as if her heart started pumping blood through all four chambers at once, pouring into her lungs and flooding it through her body. She blinked and felt her breath become shorter.”

As Alexander crosses the street, inexplicably drawn to this innocent blonde girl with freckles, thus begins a tale so moving that I will never ever forget it.

Paullina Simons paints a painfully stark portrayal of Stalin’s communist Soviet Union and the sufferings of the people of Leningrad, as Hitler’s siege of the city slowly starves the people to death. Amidst the starving hunger, the bitter cold winter, and the death of loved ones, burns an “impossible love” between Tatiana and Alexander. For Alexander is the soldier that Tatiana’s sister, Dasha, had declared herself “in love with”, just that very morning, before Alexander and Tatiana’s fateful meeting. But it is lies, secrets and fears that eat at their souls and will threaten to tear them apart. “What does it cost the soul to lie?”

There were moments I was so angry at Alexander that it broke my heart. And there were moments when the intensity of Alexander’s love and protectiveness for Tatia made me love him so much it hurt. My GAWD!! The way he loved her?! Be still my heart! But it was the innocent, naïve, selfless and stubborn Tatiana, who grew into a woman with such strength and perseverance, who became “my hero”. And the way she loved him?? *sniffles* They both made such sacrifices for each other. I loved the yearning, the looks, the little touches, the tender and passionate moments between them, and also all their confrontations.

This was by no means a perfect book. While Paullina Simons vividly paints pictures with her descriptions, there are times when the wordiness becomes too much, and may have benefited from a bit of editing down the repetitive moments. I can completely see why someone would not like this book for that reason. But because the depth and breadth of emotions that I felt reading this book surpassed any other, it was a 5+ Stars!!! read for me - THANK YOU, Paullina Simons, for penning this incredible story!

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book and make sure you have uninterrupted time to read it, if you can have that luxury. Because you will be COMPELLED to read this book into the dawn and beyond! There are two more books to this tale: Tatiana and Alexander and The Summer Garden.

For those who have read the book: I loved the Kirov trips, Luga, St. Isaac’s, Pushkin's book and their chats about it, and Lazarevo! ^_~

For those who haven’t read the book: What are you waiting for??? Besides some time to surrender over to this epic tale? ^_^ Seriously, though, this may not be a book for everyone. It seems that people either love it or hate it. Besides the writing style, it seems whether one loves this or not, depends on how the reader views the characters and the intent/motivation behind their actions. Anyway, if you do read it, I hope you love it as much as I do! Because this truly was the most intense and amazing experience.

I'm sorry if my "review" is TOO MUCH, but I could go on and on about this story...But I won't. ^_^

My Alexander (Henry Cavill) *SIIIGGHHHSSS* 

 My Tatiana (Teresa Palmer)

And have you ever read a story that affected you so much that you found yourself constantly looking for songs to become your "playlist", so that music could capture what you couldn't in your own words? Well, this book did that to me!

My Playlist:

While there are a number of Sarah McLachlan songs that form my “playlist” to this story, this song below, for me, is Tatiana and Alexander’s “theme song”:

** Ice Cream by Sarah McLachlan:
For this reason: “Her lips were on his face, on his throat, on the top of his chest. She whispered, “You know what your skin feels like to me? The ice cream that I love. Creamy, smooth. Your whole body is the color of caramel, like my crème brulée, but you’re not cold like ice cream, you’re warm.” She rubbed her lips back and forth against his chest.
“So – better than ice cream?”
“Yes,” she smiled, moving up to his lips. “I love you better than ice cream.” - The Bronze Horseman

** Song For A Winter's Night by Sarah McLachlan:
(Cover of Glenn Lighfoot's song)
It represents Tatiana's hunger for Alexander during the winter of the siege of Leningrad, and also the starvation of the city. I love the lyrics and her haunting voice.

** Falling Softly:
Kris Allen version. This song, to me, represents Alexander's feelings about Tatiana and the whole situation in The Bronze Horseman:

A good Fan-made video I found with Henry Cavill as Alexander and Romola Garai as Tatiana: