A fascinating story that grips you and makes you think, It's definitely thought provoking and spiritual it its own way.

This is my first Anna Hope book and I really enjoyed it. Recommended.

I don’t think I was the audience for this particular book and for me I found it to be a chore to read .

This is really beautiful. I loved cycling through each person in each timeframe, and then revisiting them. Every story was engaging and every character so well-drawn.

The White Rock tells four stories with different characters all drawn to an island in South America. I have read and thoroughly enjoyed all of Anna Hope’s previous novels, but struggled to engage in this. It felt like a book of short stories, but was slow paced and I couldn’t relate to or invest in the characters or their storylines.

Anna Hope's "The White Rock" is a mesmerizing journey through time, where four individuals from different centuries are irresistibly drawn to the sacred White Rock off the coast of Mexico. The stories of a British writer in 2020, an American rock star in 1969, a displaced Yoeme girl in the 20th century, and a Spanish naval officer in 1775 intertwine, echoing through time with breathtaking emotional resonance.

Hope's evocative prose and meticulous research bring each era to life, immersing readers in the Pacific coast's vivid descriptions and historical turmoil. The characters' struggles and quests for meaning in rapidly changing worlds are beautifully interwoven, exploring themes of identity and resilience.

"The White Rock" showcases Hope's ability to draw connections between disparate time periods, highlighting the interconnectedness of humanity. As the tales converge, the echoes of their lives reverberate, underscoring the enduring power of storytelling.

While the novel's scope is ambitious, some readers may desire deeper exploration of certain characters or time periods. Nonetheless, Anna Hope's skillful storytelling and her ability to transport readers across time and space make this a captivating and thought-provoking read.

Really interesting book and the writing is beautiful. It follows the story of 4 people during different periods in time and their connection with the bite rock off the coast of Mexico. The writing really was beautiful but there were times I found the story difficult to follow and the links to the white rock I felt a bit confused by. Overall I enjoyed it and was glad I read it.

I loved the format, the story of 4 different timelines all tied to The White Rock. I even enjoyed parts of each story, but I just did not get the stories a a whole. I was left with lots of unanswered questions.
Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review

Four stories and a tidal movement, haunting and elusive 4.5. raised

Anna Hope creates a strange, dreamlike book, through four journeys, linked by their focal point : a rock off the coast of a coastal town and port, San Blas, Narayit, Mexico. The Rock is a sacred site for the indigenous Wixárika people, seen as the first solid object to come into being, on earth.

The structure of her book reminded me of a sea anemone, closing down, then opening out again, with the movement of the tides.

Starting from the springboard of a deeply personal place and journey, is ‘The Writer’. This story forged from Hope’s own, and set just as the world is locking down, in spring 2020, as Covid roars and lays waste. A jump back to 1969, follows The Singer, clearly inspired by Jim Morrison, and a tour to Mexico, when Morrison was already spectacularly self-destructing. The third story, The Girl connects to the shameful slave trade of indigenous people, the Yoeme people from the Sonora region, in the very early part of the twentieth century, brought to San Blas as forced labour.

Each of these three stories is in two parts, coming to a charged, fraught point of climax, closing down to the earliest story, set in 1775, and then, opening out in turn, jumping forward, 1907, 1969, 2020

The central story, The Lieutenant, the earliest heart of darkness around which the others form, and then re-form is set in 1775, and based, again on real events. The Spanish charting of the coastline, and the seizing of the territory as part of its Empire.

This is a wonderfully troubling book. I am intrigued, reading it later than I had intended, to find that for many or us, certain sections (all different) did not quite seem to be as strong as other sections. This was the case for me too – I had some reservations about the Morrison section, as I often do have where there is some inhabitation or invention ‘inside the head’ of known historical people from the living memory past, particularly when these involve the more reprehensible aspects, or invented events even if these seem perfectly in line with other known, awful behaviours. Obviously Morrison absolutely trashed himself, so Hope was not in any way besmirching his reputation

What, then, is the book about : Many things, but the edge between the sacred and the profane, the malevolence and destructiveness of our species – as well as its yearning for the divine, and the knotty difficulties of cultural appropriation, are some.

Not for me, this one. I remained unengaged with the characters and their storylines. The central motif of the novel is a real-life White Rock off the coast of Mexico, an ancient and sacred site. Four different protagonists from four different time periods – 2020, 1969, 1907 and 1775 – find that they are drawn to it. Each of them is troubled and each of them looks for healing. However, although this is an interesting conceit, I don’t feel that it succeeded. I couldn’t relate to any of them, not least The Singer from 1969, a rock star based on Jim Morrison of the Doors whose exploits quite frankly bored me and I skipped most of his sections. The White Rock gets its own section in the middle of the narrative, but I wasn’t much drawn to it either. Because the four separate narratives don’t connect, except in their relation to the Rock, I failed to find an overarching theme to the book, leaving me somewhat bemused by the end. Unimpressed, unfortunately, as I know Anna Hope can do better than this.

DNF’d about 30% of the way through - this is less a novel and more a collection of vignettes exploring a small Mexican town throughout history. A very, very different novel from Expectation, and I could tell that Anna Hope was just too far out of her comfort zone.

Anna Hope's The White Rock follows four unnamed narrators in four different time periods, travelling in the same area of Mexico: the Writer in 2020, the Singer in 1969, the Girl in 1907 and the Lieutenant in 1775. Cloud-Atlas style, the narratives are split in two, so we return to each narrator in the second half of the book in backwards order (I didn't think this added anything profound, but it worked better for me than getting each of them in a lump). All four narratives circle around a white rock off the coast of San Blas. The Writer is returning to this sacred place to give thanks for the birth of her child; the Singer is intrigued when he hears it was used as a site for human sacrifice; the Girl is a member of the Yoeme people, for whom the rock occupies a central place in their mythology; and the Lieutenant has to decide whether to abandon his colonising mission and desert his ship when he encounters the rock.

All of Anna Hope's novels have been well-written, but The White Rock approaches another level; I worried that it might be a little poetic and pretentious because of the use of capitalised tags rather than character names, but actually the prose is fluid and immersive. However, interestingly, the strength of the writing helped me really pin down why it is that none of her novels have quite worked for me. The quality of the prose is definitely there but the quality of the ideas is consistently lacking. This was most obvious in Expectation - which was so hemmed in by assumptions about what women want - but it was present here, as well. The four narratives are linked by a sense of worlds that are ending, relationships with the environment that are being destroyed - most obviously in the 2020 section, when the Writer muses about climate change, and least obviously in the 1969 section (which was therefore my favourite). However, Hope has little new to say about this. And while she has obviously reflected on her use of a fictional Yoeme woman, the native characters fall into familiar tropes (symbiotic relationship with the environment, good and pure, contrasting with the rapacity of the other characters), and it felt like an odd choice of focus for a white English writer.

This flowed well and was easy to read but ultimately had little substance; once you try and look past the prose, the story dissolves. 3.5 stars.

This is such a hard book to evaluate. There were aspects of it that I really loved — notably the lyrical prose — but as a whole it felt frustratingly disjointed and incomplete, as if the author had run out of ink to join up the dots.

The format doesn’t help: four separate stories set centuries apart, linked only by the eponymous White Rock; a sacred place, a place of pilgrimage, jutting out of the Pacific off the coast of Mexico. There’s The Lieutenant (1775), The Girl (1907), The Singer (1969), and The Writer (2020). For each of them, the White Rock plays a pivotal role in their life.

Hope has chosen to split each story into two parts, which for me added to the sense of disorientation. I’d just be getting a foothold in one story, when I’d be rudely transported to another time, another cast of characters, then bounced out of that one into yet another.

To be fair, the stories are beautifully told, if some more engaging than others. Hope’s historical research is meticulous, and this come through in her powerfully evoked sense of time and place.

I was particularly drawn to the story of the young Yoeme girl, whose forced displacement from her ancestral home was shamefully indicative of the actions of colonialist powers the world over. But, I was left wanting to know more about her fate.

The story of the writer, which begins and ends this novel, was also compelling, but again lost some of its potency from being carved in two. Likewise, the singer’s tale, inspired by rock legend Jim Morrison.

The fourth story, that of the lieutenant, was interesting in as much as it gave some insight into the work of the earliest navigators and cartographers. But it was the weakest of the four and I could quite happily have skipped over it.

I feel frustrated that I didn’t ‘get’ the overarching message of this book (if there is one), but I do love Hope’s writing and would be keen to read more of her work.

It took me a while to get into this one, but once I was in - I was in. A really thought provoking and reflective read about our planet told through four different protagonists and their lifetimes. It reminded me of the kind of reverence given to Es Vedra, the rock off Ibiza. A book to read slowly and take in .

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I really loved Hope's last novel as it chimed with my own experiences. This one is very different, and I'm not 100% sure I got it completely, but the different storylines were compelling and it seemed to all tie together into a story about the legacies of colonialism and our need to embrace indigenous wisdom to save our planet. I was particularly affected by the Yoeme storyline, as that's not something I knew before. A brave novel that I hope gets some readership.

Really enjoyed the differing timelines and the different storylines, turning this book into more than one story. There are some really hard hitting themes within this book and the author addresses these sensitively.

Like most reviewers, I was so excited for this book after reading Anna Hope's Expectation as I absolutely loved Expectation and it is a book I continuously recommend to other contemporary fiction lovers like myself. Unfortunately, this book is VERY different and not my style at all.

I actually didn't manage to finish this book, I tried to stick with it and persevere but it wasn't happening. I was really lost with what the actual point of the novel was and felt like 4 very dull characters who I couldn't connect with being linked by a rock alone wasn't something that grabbed and held my attention. I did find I was skim reading a lot of it which is why I decided to give up with it, but perhaps in the future I will give it another go but for now, its not one for me and not something I would recommend to people who enjoyed Expectation.

The White Rock exists in Mexico and is the focal point of four separate stories which I found difficult to connect or relate to. This book didn't work for me.

A complex novel which uses short stories all set in the same area of Mexico to tell a story of the discrimination faces by native people from the region
The book starts with a modern day story of a group of foreigners seeking solace in a ritual carried out for centuries by native peoples at a white rock just off the coast of Mexico and continues with a collection of takes from historical people around the same area
Each little story is beautifully complete and complex in themselves and in combination they tell a strong story based on an evocative location
It’s always difficult for non natives to tell such strong stories but I felt the author managed this with great sensitivity .I felt the native people were shown as strong and beautiful even when I’m ghastly situations such as historical slavery marches .i learnt something from the book ,I suppose only native readers can speak to its accuracy
I was very quickly invested in the individual characters we meet during the book and liked the way their stories were reintroduced at points during the book making it feel more a cohesive novel than simply a selection of short stories
I believed all the characters they were real people I wanted to know more about .I loved the setting which was so strong it provided almost another character to the book
The author has an easy to read enjoyable prose style
I would recommend to anyone who like me adored American Dirt last year
I read an early copy on NetGalley Uk the book
Was published in August 2023 by Penguin general Uk

This was a very interesting book. Its 4 stories centred around a white rock island in South America. Each of the people in the stories is drawn to the rock. I really enjoyed the first two stories. I thought it was very interesting that the author didn't use names. Which actually helped me out as I am terrible at remembering names in books lol. The stories stick but the names disappear into oblivion. The first story is about the writer, then the rock star. Each story goes further back in time. Unfortunately I lost interest in the last two stories they just didn't hold my interest and I don't know why. This is the first book I have team by this author and I commend her for writing this book in such a unique style. I really enjoyed reading most of this book so I have given it a 3.5 star rating round up as it is better than a 3 star book. The author wrote this book well. It was obviously well researched and it followed really well. To some people the connections between the 4 stories and the rock is not obvious. But I don't think I am giving to much away by saying they are drawn to it as each has something they need to change in there lives.

Many thanks to the author and publishers for creating such an interesting and very unique book.

The above review has already been placed on goodreads, waterstones, Google books, Barnes&noble, kobo, amazon UK where found and my blog today https://ladyreading365.wixsite.com/website/post/the-white-rock-by-anna-hope-penguin-viking-3-5-stars either under my name or ladyreading365

Like most of the other reviewers I found Anna Hope’s latest novel a disappointment. It focuses on four characters from 1775 to the present who are all linked to a mysterious white rock in Mexico. The problem is that while the two more historical narrators have fascinating stories - one is an eighteenth century Spanish navy officer sent to chart unexplored areas and the other is a Yoeme girl expelled from Arizona and sent to Mexico to be enslaved - the two modern stories are pretty dull in comparison. It’s hard to care about the writer in 2020 or the 1960s rockstar. While a similar device worked well in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, I’m left thinking White Rock could have been significantly better by focusing on the two historical stories which were genuinely gripping and perilous.