This is a DNF for me due to the anti-Roma sentiments--I think it was completely unnecessary. I am interested to read more by Benjamin because the concept of the book was great and well-thought out, but I was disappointed by this book.

Thank you for the opportunity to review - this had great promise and lyrical writing, but was overly heavy.

This story was extremely touching and deep. The concept is hard to relate to unless you understand that area but overall, I loved it!!!

I found this read actually very interesting as a profound example of destiny and the various ways it can play out. Very good characters and Benjamin writes in a way that really pulled me in.

This was a unique read for me, maybe a little out of my reading preference but I liked it more than i thought I would. I liked the idea of the characters lives being influenced and what they chose because of the psychics predictions.

When the four Gold siblings visit a fortune teller, they don't understand the power of her reading. After finding out the dates of their deaths, the Gold children do what they can to change the course of their lives, but the end is inevitable. Was the fortune teller right all along?

The Immortalists is a sweeping tale of family, love lost and found between siblings, and the choices we make based on the information we have on hand. The story of the Gold siblings is heartbreaking - each child battling a self-fulfilling prophecy, separating from each other, seeking companionship or vengeance. The book will keep you on the edge of your seat, longing for more time, just as the Gold siblings do.

Thanks so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me access to this book. Interesting premise... The story follows children who know the date they will die. I have mixed feelings about this book. there were parts that I enjoyed and parts that just weren't for me. For the right people I will be recommending the book . Thanks again for letting have a chance to read it.

An absolute joy of a book - one of those novels you find yourself staying up late to finish another chapter. The characters are beautifully rendered, the plot is subtle and layered, and the writing is gorgeous.

I liked the beginning of this book more than the end, was a bit disappointed overall. The first two individual stories were excellent, and the rest of the book didn't live up to that initial promise. Would still read future books by Benjamin, this showed promise.

What would you do if you knew the day of your death?

A good start and a book I was excited to read. However I may be in the minority here as I was greatly disappointed in the book.

In the late 60’s four siblings go and see a fortune teller who goes on to tell each one the date of their death. Instead of a cohesive interwoven tale we get four separate vignettes. The siblings seem to disperse after the death of their father and have very little to do with each other. There’s no real deep dive into any one character and it just seems adrift. (Maybe that’s the point?)

I almost stopped reading during the prologue and first story. I’m not a prude but there were parts that were much too graphic to my liking. But why and how Simon dies will be no shock.

The last two stories, Daniel and Varya seem a bit more fleshed out but this is not a book I’ll be recommending to anyone.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for this reader's copy. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

I think it is a question that gets asked a lot. "If you knew when you were going to die (day, month, year) how would you live your life until that moment?"

The Gold siblings, on a hot summer day in 1969, land in the apartment of a woman they have heard can tell them things, true things. Things about their future lives. The four kids go in, one by one, to receive their death date. Simon, the youngest, is the most affected by the news he receives and won't tell anyone. Not until a few years later do the four share their dates with one another, except for Simon. All he will say is he passes on at a very young age. Varya, the oldest girl, and Daniel, the oldest boy, are in their college years and out on their own. Karla has just graduated from High School and is headed to the West Coast with magic in mind. Simon, with two years of High School left, is feeling the pressure of not enough time and family obligations that are suffocating him. He finds himself sitting next to Karla on a bus bound for San Francisco. With their death dates ahead of them, all four Gold children try to live a life that makes the most out of the time they've been given.

I think the question that follows the question is, "Is how you choose to live your life what brings the circumstance around that end your life?" I feel like I would have that date so fixed that it would color all I did and the decisions I made and would probably be the impetus to my demise on the day. If someone managed to convince me I would die on a specific day I feel like I would use it as the excuse to die on that day. But that's just me. Benjamin shares the story of the Gold siblings in the order of their given death dates. I liked the stories about Simon, Karla, and Varya the best. Daniel's annoyed me. I almost felt like Benjamin didn't have a firm idea of Daniel's story and lost her steam with him but then regained it for Varya. At the risk of being a spoiler...Karla's story annoyed the heck out of me when it concluded because I felt like she made her death date happen. She didn't have to but she choose to and that really bothered me. In fact, Simon, and I suppose Varya, were the only siblings who I didn't feel brought their death dates into reality. If someone tells me I am dying on December 14, 2020, then on December 14, 2020 - and probably the day before and after it - I am staying in my house and being super cautious, even if I don't believe it is true. Unless I want to die. So perhaps Karla and Daniel wanted to die. Varya's character felt a little undeveloped and by the time we hit her part of the story it felt a little like Benjamin was rushing to develop her before she had to finish the book. All in all, I enjoyed the read but looking back on what I've just said about it I think I might have enjoyed 50%-75% of it.

What would you do if you knew the date your death?

The Immortalists has a great premise, and was promising addition to my to read list. It ended up being a very underwhelming read for me for a few reasons.

The premise (bold above) gets shoved aside quickly for four short stories about the Gold siblings. The book starts with the young siblings visiting a woman who can tell them the day that they will die. Each sibling gets a different response that shapes how they view life and death.

The stories were cliche and obvious in their endings (and the characters). Simon is gay and living in San Francisco in the 80s. He contracts AIDS and dies young. Klara is a magician who has concerns with showmanship. She commits suicide on the night of her big Vegas debut. Daniel, a military doctor and married to a woman who does not want children, searches for the death teller and his life ends in a shoot out with the FBI agent. Varya's story is odd. She's a researcher focusing on the aging process, and as predicted will die at age 88 but we don't see her death.

The story felt a little misguided and really did nothing to engage the responsibility of living with knowledge of the future. The directions were predictable. The writing was okay, but was filled with this weird sexual lanugage that didn't quite weave into the story. The first sentence describes Varya as a thirteen year old girl just hitting puberty with a "patch of fur between her legs" and the section of Simon's story is filled with almost raunchy descriptions of gentiles and sexual desire. It just felt strangely out of place and like Benjamin was trying to hard to fit into this "literary fiction" category.

Neither of those passages really contributed to the intellectual or emotional value of the story, and was a distraction to me while reading. There are some pieces in Daniel's story where he begins to question religion and how it has shaped his life, but it ultimately does nothing to enhance the story any further.

This story had a lot of promise, but I would not recommend it to readers looking for the magical and lyrical type of "literary fiction".

This story is about 4 siblings, who visit a fortune teller that gives them the dates of when they're going to die. They take these dates and keep it im their minds.
We follow each sibling and how they live their lives over large amount of time.

I would place this under speculative fiction. It makes the reader think about how they would live their lives if given a time of their death. Would you waste away your life or live to the fullest? Would you even take that suggested date and implant that as really your time of death?

All things this book makes you think about when picking this up.

An excellent premise, with several very interesting characters. but it ended up feeling very trite. These themes and issues have been explored in so many books so much better. Underwhelming.

I was hoping for a fantasy-based novel here, but it leans more towards the literary instead of building this fantasy world that it sells itself as. Nonetheless, the writing is good and the characters enjoyable. 3.5 stars because I don't think it was marketed accurately and that led to disappointment in the story.

The story is a family saga. Is not necessarily what I read for fun but it’s deep and philosophical and keeps you thinking about it even before you finished.

If you knew when you were going to die would you change how you live your life? That is how this story unfolds. The family of four siblings see a psychic and she reveals this to them. We then follow them as they live their lives haunted by the information the psychic gave them. There were parts of this novel that were a little slow-moving, but overall it was a good book.

"The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin was quite a treat." I still can't believe I didn't read this sooner. Any who let's move on to the synopsis of the book and of course, there will be NO SPOILERS HERE.
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SUMMARY
If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.

The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
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MY THOUGHTS
I think this book promised the content and context that it was trying to put out. I loved how the author broke up the story between the Gold siblings and have their stories intertwine, whilst one of the siblings have passed on their prophesied death. I also enjoyed the story of gypsies and that some gypsies are are not what they seem to be. I think my favorite story would have to be Klara for sure, because she took her role as woman and tried to make the best of being a female magician, because in that day in age, people perceived women as the assistant to the man, but she quite proved herself in her own way,

WOULD I RECOMMEND THIS OR NOT?
I would recommend this to anyone willing dive into the known of the unknown and figured some things out along the way.

The Immortalists holds an interesting synopsis but unfortunately for me, the book failed to meet my expectations. I expected something much different and sadly, this just wasn't for me.

Although it is well written and an interesting concept I have lost interest in finishing the book and therefore won't be giving it a proper review and will give it a neutral 3 stars.