The Bronze Horseman: An Epic Tale of Impossible Love and Family Betrayal During the Siege of Leningrad

How can I even start this? I can’t tell you how in love I am with this book, the characters, the story, the love. It’s really hard to explain it but, beyond the suffering and the frustration… there’s such a beautiful story about love and patience and truth and loyalty. I couldn’t stop reading and I’m glad the book was long enough that, even though I couldn’t stop, it didn’t end as quickly, and even so, I still ended up needing more. Needing more of Shura. God, Shura <3. The story. Well, The Bronze Horseman is the story of Tatiana Metanova, a girl born and raised in Leningrad, Russia, around 1941. It’s set in a intense and difficult time. A time where hunger and suffering and death was all around. A war was warming up and people were getting killed either by the hand of others holding a gun or by the lack of food. It didn’t matter how, people were dying more and more every day. How hard it must’ve been. With every passing day, life got harder and harder and Tatiana struggled more and more, trying to keep her family alive. What kept her alive? Alexander Belov. He meant hope. He meant truth. He meant safety. He meant love. Whenever he was around, no matter how bad it was on the outside, there was hope that someday, somehow, everything would be okay. It took me a while to read this book. Why? I’m still asking myself that same question. I don’t know, but I’m glad I finally did. While I was reading TBH, well beyond the frustrating and beautiful romance, there’s the story about how people struggled to survived and I kept thinking… it’s unbelievable how, after all these years, after all the supposedly advance society has made, there are countries that are still going through the same crap. Maybe not in the same way, because then it was a public masacre. Now, it’s all done discreetly. People die every day, but every day there is a better show to watch. You may not know this, you may not care, but I come from a country were food rations are now part of the daily shop. When (and if) you find whatever it is you’re looking for at the market, you can’t get as many as you want or need, because the government won’t allow it. My country is not at war with another country, it is at war with itself, which is way worse, if you ask me, and because of that, I don’t live there anymore. Just like Tatiana had to, we had to leave. So, without wanting to sound depressing or anything, I saw and felt the story in a different way that I’m used to. My country still has resources, but it’s all going down very quickly. It’s nice when a book takes you far away from your world and creates a whole new one just for you. But it’s always nice when a book reminds you of the world you do live in, of the things you have and how grateful we all should be for everything and everyone around us. Now, let me go back to the story. More specifically, Tatiana’s story. Life has always had a way of getting in the middle of everything and make sure you have to fight for what you love. No matter how sick, no matter how mad, no matter how weak you are, you will always do anything and everything to keep your family safe. No matter how sad it makes you, no matter how much it hurts, you’ll always try to do what’s right, and that’s exactly what she did. She fought and stayed awake as long as she needed to and well beyond past that. “Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: What do believe in? What do you hope for? What do you love?” Tatiana is as good as she can be. She’s innocent and naive, and thoughtful and she’s kind enough to give away whatever she has for herself to make someone she cares about happy. She has a big heart and she’s one of the strongest female characters I’ve read. She loves deeply and trust completely on those she believes in. Her innocence is pure and it won’t stain the vision she has from the world, from the opportunity it has to offer. But don’t mistake her innocence for blindness. Even when her hopes and expectations are high, she knows what she has in front of her nose, she knows there’s probably a long way, but she’ll do whatever she can to make it happen, to get whatever it is she wants. She is infuriatingly stubborn. Once her mind is set, there’s no way she’ll go back. If she said she was going to get food, she won’t come back until she has something to eat on her hands. “Alexander, were you looking for me?” “All my life.” Alexander. Belov. He is intense, passionate, thoughtful, strong, stubborn, stupid, sweet, frustrating, trustworthy, reliable. He is the kind of guy you won’t be able to stop thinking about. He’s the guy who takes care of the people he loves. He’s the kind of guy who will give himself away for the greater good, to save his everything. He’s a soldier. He fights for what he believes is right and he’ll do it until the very end. He doesn’t stop. He fights and gives and loves with all his heart and that passion is what makes you love him completely, deeply, wholeheartedly. “There are some battles, no matter how much you don’t want to fight them, that you just have to fight. That are worth giving your life for.” Now… Tatiana and Alexander’s story. You haven’t met a more frustrating and beautiful and saddest story than these two’s. No one said love at 17 was easy, specially not in Russia while Hitler is bombing, blocking and starving the country. They can’t be together, but they certainly can’t be away from each other. The walks, the visits, the looks. The stolen moments, the stolen smiles, the inside jokes. I loved and suffered every minute of it. There’s no other way to live this story. You will swoon and you will ache and you will struggle along Tatiana, along Alexander, just like they do to survive for the other. The book itself is just brilliant. It’s not just a love story, it’s a story about how someone who’s gone through so much and yet, they still had the strength to keep going. It’s about surviving a life that completely sucks and still seeing the beauty of it. It’s not about accepting life and surrendering every day a bit more, it’s about accepting life and trying to make it better every day. It’s about accepting what you have and still fighting for that something more. I think there’s no need to say it but I absolutely loved this book. The story is perfect even in it’s sad setting. The descriptions of how life was is so amazingly written, there’s no space for doubt of how hard and horrible it must’ve been. Everything is so detailed you can make out a perfect image in your head of what’s going on, how the people look, how they act, how they sound. I can’t wait for more.

The Bronze Horseman is a story that will stay with me for a long while. Not only is it considered by many to be an epic romance, but it also shows brutal and heartbreaking consequences of war. I think the palpable portrayal of human suffering is the element that will remain with me the longest. It was emotionally intense for sure. While reading, I fluctuated between the ebook and audiobook experience depending on what setting I was in, and at 811 pages via kindle and over 30 hours via audible, this book is no joke. Regardless of the intimidating length, I remained thoroughly engaged throughout and my investment in this story had me watching for every opportunity to pop on my headphones for a few hours. Unfortunately, there were some issues that distracted me from a full 5-star experience; however, the characters appeared to remain consistent in their values, motivations, and flaws throughout which is a feat for a novel of this size, and Paullina Simons has brought respectful attention to Alexander Pushkin's narrative poem by the same name. I was never once bored, I never needed a break, I was absolutely swept up by the romance element, and the popular phrase "all the feels" definitely applies here. Overall, I'm glad I finally read The Bronze Horseman and I plan to continue the series. My favorite quote: "All great things worth having require great sacrifice worth giving." Paullina Simons's The Bronze Horseman series includes the following installments as of December 2017: #0.5: Children of Liberty #.75: Bellagrand #1: The Bronze Horseman #2: Tatiana and Alexander #3: The Summer Garden #3.5: Tatiana's Table: Tatiana And Alexander's Life Of Food And Love

Highly recommend reading this book. It is long beautiful story that I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life.

The bronze horseman is a beautiful love story full of heart break and sorrow but with stunning heart warming moments that fill you with joy .

I haven't really read many romance novels before, this is probably the first one in this genre that I have really really enjoyed. I purchased this after seeing it on the Dymocks Top 100 book list for 2015. It is incredibly addictive and I don't think for a lot of the book that many of the characters are particularly likeable, but they are very interesting because they have defined strong characters. The detail on the wartime famine in Leningrad is quite astonishing and eye opening. I think the book really picks up towards the second half and the last third, where the romance comes in and it becomes a book that you can't really put down. I really liked this book and it is one of the most engaging books I have read recently.

The story of Tatiana and Alexander is well written and captivating. Loved the whole series and read it several times already. Highly recommend for anyone who enjoys romance, as well as history.

Okay, how am I supposed to write a review that can do this book justice in even the tiniest bit? I have no clue. There were already several other people here on goodreads who did a pretty good job on that. But you know, when there is this ONE book that you will always compare other reads to- THEN ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY LEAVE THE BOOK WITHOUT A GLORIOUS REVIEW. There is just no way. So let me tell you what made the story so special and unforgettable to me: I usually neither like love triangles, nor stories about war. I really don't. So, before I bought the Ebook, I had no idea that the story contained to 40% of love-triangle-ish conflicts. But guess what, I found it interesting how I could hate and love a character so much at the same time. I never read such kind of a conflict before (the protagonist loving someone and suffering over him for not being with herself because of another woman). I found it most honorable how Tatiana acted selflessly and in favor to her sister, not snatching Dasha's (more or less) beloved boyfriend away. Of course- on the one hand you wanted to shake Tatiana for being so stubborn and stupid, on the other hand you wanted to never forgive Alexander for not ending his relationship with Dasha. OH! And let's not forget how we probably ALL wanted to CHOKE Dasha. ARGH, DASHA!!! Apart from the fact that I wanted to end Dasha's life for leaving the role of the big sister to Tatiana, I could not get rid of the thought how I would act in times of war and starvation. Would I be as brave as Tatiana and keep working, keep getting up in the morning, keep caring for my family instead of myself? I was not so sure about it. I guess no one can really tell how they would act in such life-threatening situations. Dasha certainly started to shut herself down. The only thing that kept her from giving up was the hope that Alexander would make everything better and keep her from dying. I also liked was how the POV switched at some points of the story, letting us have an insight of both Alexander's and Tatiana's decisions and where they were located. It made the tension rise to its climax at several parts of the story. What I thought was very rare concerning my reading experience, was, that I never cried one tear throughout the whole book. Not a single one. What I constantly felt was pure fear. 80% of the book I was so afraid (or knew) that something bad was going to happen, it made stay wide awake at night, after I actually found the courage to leave my precious Alexander and Tatiana alone. No matter how happy they were at some points of the story, you contantly knew that it was going to get worse again and that they would be separated. A heart- wrenching and paralyzing situation for me as a reader. Although I couldn't understand what still kept them holding back from each other, I could still see how irritated, helpless and paralyzed they must have felt, facing war and an uncertain future. I adored Tatiana and Alexander for not giving up and for not leaving each other alone rotting by themselves. It was such a brave, powerful and passionate connection between those two, it was everything a woman dreams of and will hardly ever get. Yet I couldn't get enough of the moments between the protagonists. I've never read such love scenes before that were so heart- wrenchingly beautiful or that made you wanna scream out loud because of rage. The fact that all this fighting and losing loved ones actually happened in history not too long ago, brought the reading experience on a whole new level for me. Paullina Simons didn't use too much ways of describing the death of people. She told it in a very honest and calm way. It felt almost like you walked the streets of Leningrad yourself- holding your breath and letting your eyes wander silently- not trying to make any noise in a cold winter night. I hope you get my point. 5 stars and more for such a great book.

Devo admitir que terminei esse poderoso e surpreendente livro aos prantos. Esta é uma resenha extremamente difícil de escrever, porque eu realmente não sei como farei jus a esse incrível enredo. Ele traz tudo o que uma verdadeira estória de amor deve trazer: luta, inspiração, decepção, euforia, esperança, sobrevivência e sacrifícios. Até onde você iria pela pessoa que você ama? Esta história definitivamente responde a essa pergunta. O cavaleiro de Bronze é envolto em uma escrita lírica e mágica, e se desenrola lentamente, permitindo que as nossas emoções se intensifiquem aos poucos, que você realmente conheça os personagens e mergulhe na estória. O resultado é que todo o seu coração vivenciará cada parte, cada trecho, cada passagem desse livro e ao final voce se sentirá tonta com o turbilhão de emoções que terá experimentado. A narrativa se passa em Leningrado (São Petersburgo), antiga União Soviética, durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, e começa com o anúncio de que os alemães atacaram a fronteira russa. Tatiana é a irmã mais nova de Dasha e gêmea de Pasha, e juntos dividem um pequeno espaço de apenas dois cômodos com seus pais e avós. Com a divulgação da guerra, Tatiana tem uma tarefa: sair para comprar alimentos. Nessa empreitada, ela vê Alexander, um soldado, do outro lado da rua e algo mágico acontece instantaneamente dentro deles, como se o destino os trouxesse juntos naquele exato lugar, naquele exato momento. Eles passam o dia juntos e ele a ajuda, contudo Tatiana mal sabe que, na verdade, ele é "namorado" de sua irmã mais velha Dasha. O se passa é uma “espécie” de triangulo amoro. Eu digo espécie porque a situação em que eles se encontram é até certo ponto platônica. A relação entre Tatinana e Alexander será complicada, eu diria compreensível, e.... de cortar o coração. Mas, este triangulo definitivamente não é o fio condutor da trama. Não. Ele é apenas a primeira de inúmeras provações pelas quais este casal terá que passar para ficar juntos. Tatiana é notável. Paulina faz um excelente trabalho ao retratar o seu amadurecimento no decorrer da trama, através do amor e da guerra. Ela adquire garra e se torna alguém singular. O seu altruísmo, a sua força e a sua coragem são comoventes. E, Alexander ... Nossa, esse homem é fantástico! Sua coragem, seu senso de justiça, sua paixão, sua proteção feroz sobre Tania. Uau... Enquanto Tatiana lida com suas inseguranças e as responsabilidades que ela tem para a com a sua família, Alexander luta com o peso de seu passado, de seus segredos e de suas promessas. Isso tudo, em meio à um inverno rigoroso, bombardeios, mortes, escassez de comida e falta de eletricidade e água. O enredo traz experiência trágica atrás de experiência trágica, mas polvilhadas com momentos de alegria e de esperança que lhe darão a força necessária para suportar a estória. É simplesmente inacreditável, tudo pelo que eles tem que passar a fim de ficarem juntos. Então, por que ler algo tão dramático? Porque ele vale cada palavra, cada noite mal dormida, cada minutinho do seu tempo. Porque as estórias mais lindas de amor são sempre trágicas, porque o amor entre os protagonistas é lindo, e porque eu garanto que você não irá se arrepender. Além do mais os romances históricos enriquecem a nossa cultura, nos transportando para o passado e nos fazendo aprender de uma forma que nenhum livro de história faria. O Cavaleiro de bronze é um romance absolutamente inesquecível e imperdível!