The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman, #1) in Buddy Read Zone

Sep 17, 2013 Debra rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorites, emotional-rollercoaster, favorite-series, tearjerkers, romance, unputdownable, swoonworthy-male-lead

♥ 5 BREATHLESSLY EPIC AND MEMORABLE STARS. ♥

"Love is," she repeated slowly, "when he is hungry and you feed him. Love is knowing when he is hungry."

"Love is, to be loved," said Alexander, "in return."

The Bronze Horseman is probably the most EPIC love story I've ever read. There just aren't any words adequate enough to describe how much I loved this book! From the moment I started reading it, I could not put it down until I finished the very last page. And even then, I just HAD to sta ...more

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Dec 22, 2012 destini rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

    
      But we loved with a love 
that was more than love.
–Edgar Allen Poe

What has this book done to me?

There's a reason everybody calls The Bronze Horseman an epic love story. Those are the only words that can come close to describing the sheer beauty and perfection this story was.

When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.
One look, and as they say, the rest was history!
If only it was that easy.
Not only has Tatiana set he

    
      But we loved with a love 
that was more than love.
–Edgar Allen Poe

What has this book done to me?

There's a reason everybody calls The Bronze Horseman an epic love story. Those are the only words that can come close to describing the sheer beauty and perfection this story was.

When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.
One look, and as they say, the rest was history!
If only it was that easy.
Not only has Tatiana set her sights on him, but so has her sister, Dasha. She's convinced herself she's in love with him and to spare her sister pain, Tatiana has set aside her own feelings for him so that her sister won't suffer.
It's 1941 in Leningrad and a war has started. The Siege has started.
**Before I go on further I just want to clarify: I would not classify this as a love triangle. For those of you who love them, there is a smidgen of it. It's barely there.
For those of you, like me, who absolutely abhor them, no worries! I would say it's more of a forbidden romance.

"Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask:
What do you believe in?
What do you hope
for?

But most importantly– ask:

 What do you love?

I can go on and on for days about how much I absolutely loved this book. You won't find a book like this anywhere else. Their love... it's the kind of love that everybody looks for. Love that makes you believe. In God, in each other, in something.

"I don't want to die... and not feel just once what you feel."

Tatiana Metanova

Someday her spirit would soar, she thought, but not this day.

Tatiana is one of my all-time favorite heroines. Maybe even number one. She was so selfless and pure. She had this aura that you could see and feel while you read.
Many complain that she was weak and too selfless but I wholeheartedly disagree. Yes, she had her moments but don't we all? I think it takes an incredibly strong person to put their own needs aside for others. To not give into their own wants and conveniently forget about everyone else's feelings. With where she is at in the end of the book (view spoiler) she obviously must've been doing something right. It takes a strong person to survive everything she went through.

The innocence of honesty was gone forever, for she knew she would have to live in deceit, every day in verse and prose, in close quarters... she would live in deceit. Because she felt for him.
But what Tatiana felt for Alexander was true.
But my innocence is gone forever.

Alexander Belov

"Sometimes things don't work out the way we hope, do they? No matter how much we plan, or how much we wish."

He wasn't perfect, by far, but he was pretty damn close. It's hard for me to explain exactly why I love him so much. There are some guys that win you over with big, grand gestures but Alexander focused on the little things. The small things that showed he was listening, that he cared. He would grab onto the tiniest details and make them special.

Despite how much they loved each other, though, things never came easy to them. If it was any other couple, any other love, I don't believe they could have survived. They made some difficult decisions, whether they were right or wrong is up to the reader to decide, and it definitely tested them. And the war was only making things worse.

"You promised me you would forgive me–"
"Forgive you," Tatiana hissed through her teeth, tears streaming down her face, "for your brave and indifferent face, Alexander!" She groaned in pain. "Not for your brave and indifferent heart."

However, I always believed that they would make it. They have a love like no other and if anybody could make it, it'd be them.

  
    I want you to know that should
 something happen to me, don't worry 
about my body. 
My soul isn't going to return to it, 
nor to God. It's flying straight 
to you, 
where it knows it can find you, 
in Lazarevo. 
I want to be with neither kings 
or heroes, 
but with queen of Lake Ilmen.

I can't rave enough about how well written The Bronze Horseman was. Paulina Simmons has a gift. She can make you fall in love with her characters and have you feel for them deeply and absolute despise others. She knew how to toy with my emotions perfectly. Not only was I invested into Tatiana and Alexander's but also in the story. The way she described The Siege left me feeling desolate. I can't even imagine what it must've been like living during that time. To actually feel yourself slowly die. To feel your organs shut down one by one.

The man's face, his walk, his silly hat stayed in Tatiana's mind as she closed her eyes at night. It wasn't his death that tormented her, because, unfortunately, Tatiana has seen death before... But it was this man's walking gait that Tatiana saw when she closed her eyes, because when he died, he had been walking, and though he was walking slower than Tatiana, he was not walking slower by much.

This is a story that will make you feel. Love, pain, heartbreak, need, desperation... everything.

The Bronze Horseman is long, about 800 pages, but trust me, by the end of the book you'll be begging for more. It all goes by quicker than you want it to so don't let the length scare you! I would recommend this book to anyone in a heartbeat.

"As if God Himself joined our flesh..." He took another breath. "... Me and you together, and said, they shall be one."

My songs for The Bronze Horseman (because I couldn't just choose one):
⦿ Wonderwall- Oasis
⦿ Big Jet Plane- Angus & Julia Stone
⦿ I Wanna Be Yours- Arctic Monkeys

For those of you who need to know if there is a HEA: (view spoiler) ...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Raquel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, historical-romance, favorite-couples, longer-books

Amazing!

More of a review to come later or maybe at the end of book 3. Right now, I'm exhausted emotionally and due to lack of sleep for staying up the past few nights reading this, in order to write a coherent review.

But I'm so happy I finally got around this. What an intense journey and love story. I feel like I just went through everything with these characters. This book made feel every single emotion to an extreme and loved it. I was frustrated, happy, sad, I laughed, I cried, I was giddy, ...more

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Jan 02, 2014 ~IreneOust~ added it · review of another edition

Shelves: not-for-me, too-fucking-sappy-and-boring, books-that-cured-my-insomnia

I read this a few years ago in Russian. At the time, I had no idea that the author wrote this in English first and it was translated into Russian later.

This was me throughout most of this book/story:

photo fallingasleep_zpsd412b3e7.jpg

(I guess it was a good thing because I was on a transatlantic flight and needed help falling asleep)

I am not going to rate this. Just because this particular book/story/author didn't do it for me, doesn't mean it deserves a bad rating.

Do I consider this 'an epic love story'? No. I've read better.

Do I ...more

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