I am happy to have the opportunity to read this novel. It is not a subject in history that I usually read but it was excellent.

While, overall I enjoyed Tante Eva. However the writer includes some German dialogue, which meant that I had to either try to guess the meaning of the dialogue or bring myself out of the imagined world of the novel to find out the meaning. I've read several books that have mixed German words and phrases with English text (e.g. The Book Thief, the Hangman's Daughter, etc) but on this occasion it didn't add to the text, it detracted from it.

i thought this was a interesting take on German history, I enjoyed getting to know Eva and go through her struggle. It was a really well done story and I enjoyed going through this book.

Ugh. I tried so hard but this book was so meh to me. I didn't like the writing style or character development. Nothing happened. Very underwhelming. I'm really in a reading slump this summer. This book wasn't even close to getting me out of my slump.

I enjoyed parts of this book but not others. I wasn't crazy about it but I found it to be enjoyable. I did like that it was set around the fall of the Berlin Wall, I feel like its a largely underexamined time era in a lot of historical fiction books. I was very turned off by how much German was in the book? I know a lot of readers who will look up words in different languages that come up with reading but I am not one of those readers so I felt like I was missing stuff! I think the writing was nice though, it just felt a little disappointing, perhaps because I overhyped it in my own head!

Overall, I felt kinda meh about this book. Not necessarily bad, but not particularly memorable either. Giving it 2.5/5 Stars.

I requested this book as I recognised the author as one I had read before, but actually, though I have read a collection of her stories, I think I was confusing her with the author of a different collection.

Tante Eva is about an older woman, the titular Eva, who has lived most of her life in East Berlin and is now adjusting to life in what is now just east Berlin after the fall of the Wall. The main storyline is that her American niece is coming to visit – hence this ‘Tante’ of the title.

I didn’t enjoy this book for two reasons. First, it’s just boring. I suppose there’s a critique of Germany in there but not knowing much about the time I couldn’t decipher most of it. Eva is a rather naïve woman who laments the rise in crime in her area since the fall of the Berlin wall but is reluctant to ‘westernise’. However, as for story, not much happens and it moves along slowly until the end, when it seems things are coming to a head but simply finishes and in my opinion absolutely everything is left at loose ends.

The other reason I didn’t enjoy this book (and perhaps missed some information too) was that the author seems to assume we readers are fluent in German. Now, it’s normal in most books that are set in foreign countries or are translated into English to have a few foreign words to remind the reader of their foreign setting and lend some exoticness – think a ‘danke’ or ‘bitte’ at the end of a phrase. That was not the case here. Whole chunks of dialogue were in German and rarely was a paraphrased explanation given. It was too much, and it was alienating. I found myself skipping the German and not even attempting to decipher it after a while.

So, I’m not sure what the author’s intent was with this book and it wasn’t for me. Perhaps another reader, one who reads German, will enjoy this more.

Thank you NetGalley and Soho Press.

Tante Eva is a historical fiction novel based on Berlin after the fall of the Wall. Lots of drugs, alcohol, and hardships follow Eva as she struggles to make her way. I enjoyed the writing and would read future novels by Paula Bomer, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the story.

Thank you to Soho Press and NetGalley for this ARC.

Liberated Germany- 1989 East Berlin- is a grim place in this challenging novel. Eva's retired, more or less estranged from her daughter Elena, and taking too much medication. She hangs her happiness on Maggie, her niece who comes from the US but Maggie's got an addiction problem and a creepy older boyfriend, This circles around and circles around the basically unlikable characters. There's also a lot of German, often without context, which made it difficult even for a reader like me who is willing to go with it, to know whether something important was being conveyed. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Fans of literary fiction and those interested in life in East Berlin immediately after the fall of the Wall might give this a try.

2.5 stars. This book was interesting. It didn’t blow me away, in fact, I had some issues with it. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book set around the fall of the Berlin Wall, so I appreciated that element.

Eva is struggling in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. A retired nurse, Eva copes with her depression and varicose veins by over-taking pills and alcohol. Her teenage neighbour, Krista, whose own mother is severely ill, comes by regularly to help her out and keep her company. Then Eva’s niece moves to Berlin from America and things start spiralling out of control from there.

This book explores Eva’s complicated family dynamics including, abuse, drug addiction, jealousies, poverty, and estrangements. There’s also lots of insights into what Berlin was like after 1989. I enjoyed reading those sections.

However, I cringe whenever I read something that is ableist or has micro aggressions. This had both. The author uses the term “handicapped” to describe someone who is disabled. Sure, that term was used back then, but as a modern reader and as someone who is disabled, I don’t like it. Please, do not use this term.

On top of that, the author used the n-word. She didn’t use the hard ‘r’, but that doesn’t make it any less offensive. The way it was used added nothing to the story, it came out of nowhere. It seems like it was thrown in just to be edgy. I have zero tolerance for that kind of language, especially from a white author.

There is a lot of German throughout this novel. Unless you are familiar with the language, you might be as clueless as I was because context is not always provided. However, maybe that will be changed by the time it is published.

Aside from those issues, I did find Eva’s story intriguing.

Thanks to Netgalley and Soho Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Eva lives in her East Berlin apartment, Single, retired, and living in poverty, she somewhat longs for the days of East Germany, when she felt life was better for her. Using sleeping pills, alcohol, and stimulants to get through her days, her only company is her neighbor's daughter and her occasional (married) lover. When her niece arrives from America, she has a purpose, but Maggie's own drug problems may be more than she can handle.

I really wanted to like this. It sounded so great in the blurb that I just had to request it. But, I didn't really enjoy the writing style. The random German thrown in without translations or common knowledge phrases had me using Google translate in case it was imperative to the plot. And Eva is not a super likable character. She has an Olive Kitteridge vibe to her (that is one of my "I read this because everyone said I had to, but I questioned why with every passing page).

I'm sure there are a ton of people who are going to love it, but I'm just not one of them.

DNF around 50%. I really wanted to like this book but had a hard time connecting to the characters. To me, the story definitely reads more as narrative non-fiction, which isn't exactly in my wheelhouse, so it was really hard for me to stay focused on the story. This book is definitely a character study for anyone looking to dive deeper into personal stories around the fall of the Berlin Wall.

3/5 Stars because I think others would love this, but it's not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Soho Press for providing me with an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have so many novels I'm looking forward to reading that I feel bad continuing with ones that don't just wow me. I DNF'ed this one around 60%, thank you for the opportunity!

I couldn't get into this. I tried to read as far as when the niece arrived and I just couldn't. Something didn't connect. I realised as I was re-reading when the woman broke the record as she fell and I hadn't recognised any of the preceding pages. Way too much of a slow burner.

Very interesting storyline. A great book about.deeply flawed characters. A look into Berlin after the Wall was taken down.. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more books by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me a copy of this book to read.
It is about a woman Eva who lives in a shaker neighborhood after the war in East Berlin and the wall is down. The entire story is built around her family. There is her sister, her niece, her daughter and,brother. She was married and has an affair with another man even after her husband dies.
The story goes all around the conflicts and caring about each other including a neighbors child.
The most frustrating thing in this book is the amount of written German everywhere. If you do not read German it posses a problem as you can only guess what is constantly being said.

I would not recommend this book. The German needs an English interpretation. Then the story just ends. I could not feel for the characters probably because of the German.

I was drawn in by the cover. It is so "on trend" for instagram. While the book had a good flow and the writing was correct by any standard, the story itself fell flat. You don't empathize with the main character and the story seemed like a gradable story in a writing class at whatever writing-school-is-cool-now.
The book will appeal to the people that read the author's other books and a excerpt in Lithub, The New Yorker or Paris Review might grow the number of buyers.
However, I'll look forward to the author's next works because there is potential. It just needs a little work and a little polishing.