Roya Joon and Bahman are in love. Brought together by the owner of a stationery store during turbulent times in Tehran, their love, and future, seems fated.

Until Bahman fails to show at their prearranged meeting place. And disappears, seemingly for good, from Roya's life.

Life goes on. Many years pass. By seemingly another fated event, the two reunite after sixty years.

Historical fiction lovers will like this. Roya is a teenage girl in love during a time of turmoil. We get a good idea of how it was then, from her POV.

Both Roya and Bahman really want to be together. I enjoyed their courtship and innocent attempts to wrangle a whole love out of so many broken pieces.

**SPOILER ALERTS**
I have to say I was very frustrated by this book. The characters were, for the most part, flat. I found large chunks of it boring and resorted to skimming some of the paragraphs if they didn't have information in them necessary for the progression of the story.

This story had real potential. The epilogue could have been the opening chapter. That would have set things nicely in place. The huge gaps of boringness of Roya's life in the United States would have been (imo) better served as alternating chapters between Roya's and Bahman's life. There's so much there! His mother! Mr Fakhri! The babies! ARGH. SO frustrating to slog through this when it has all this dynamite potential.

Sigh and roll my eyes. See above :)

Like I want to edit the heck out of it! Re-publish!

Has a good writing style. The entire book just needed more life to it.

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Created Aug 11, 2025 at 4:01pm • Submit your own review...