his was one of my Amazon First Reads picks for February 2022.

One of my constant gripes with fiction, especially fiction that is clearly meant to move the reader, is its lack of character and scene. I get tired of complaining about it, but I’m even more tired of reading it – I never feel like I’m close enough to the character or what is going on, and I just want to see the story for myself rather than have a narrator tell it to me.

Gorokhova’s writing, refreshingly, is everything I could ask for in that regard. Even though we are taken throughout Sasha’s life, from post-war Ivanovo to places beyond, Sasha keeps the reader close. There is never a moment where I had to wonder what Sasha was thinking; even if Sasha herself couldn’t articulate it, Gorokhova demonstrated it through the prose. While there are large parts of the story told through journal entries, even these are able to capture scenes and dive into Kolya’s state of mind during the war. The love story between Sasha and Andrei is reminiscent of Brett and Jake from The Sun Also Rises in all the best ways, and the ending of the book is absolutely perfect, exactly what you would hope for in a book like this.

If I have any complaints, it’s only the fact that some of the language can be a little flowery at times. I felt this more so in Kolya’s journal entries than anywhere else, but given that it’s literally meant to be a journal entry of someone’s experiences and feelings, I can forgive it for that.

Gorokhova knows how to write, and the characters and their stories are intriguing and heartbreaking. I may have received an ebook copy of this book for free, but I am putting it on my “to buy” list for books that I just have to put on my physical bookshelf. I’m excited for anything else Gorokhova decides to write, because if it’s at all like A Train to Moscow, it’s worth reading.