*favorite* BOOK REVIEW: The Paper Swan by Leylah Attar

Title: The Paper Swan
Series: (No; it's a standalone)
Author: Leylah Attar
Genre: New Adult, Dark Romance
Rating: 4.5/5-Stars
Cliffhanger: No
HEA: Yes, thank goodness!

They say it takes 21 days to form a habit.

They lie.

For 21 days she held on.

But on Day 22, she would have given anything for the sweet slumber of death.

Because on Day 22, she realizes that her only way out means certain death for one of the two men she loves.

 

A powerful, beautifully tragic love-story, The Paper Swan is about an innocent love that, over time, sunk into tragedy, got weighed down by vengeance and the promise of retribution—and the swim to the story's surface is heartbreaking and heartwarming, with bits of pieces of past and present like an anchor...both holding you down and lifting you up. 

"I felt like all the bits that held me together were slowly coming unglued, falling off, piece by piece. I was disappearing, disintegrating like the rocks that get eaten by the sea."

Told in the captor and captive's alternating POVs, The Paper Swan is as much of a story about life as it is about the kind of love that's as dark and deep as the ocean's depths. The characters were well-developed, so much so that even those I wanted to hate, I loved—even though my heart kept break, break, breaking. Even now, there's an ache in my chest when I think of it all.  

 “We are a question that hasn’t been answered yet, a hiding place that hasn’t been found yet, a battle that hasn’t been fought yet.”

Because it was a dark romance, within dark lives—a story of flesh and blood, of secrets and lies, and the bone-deep determination to taste the tang of revenge. There is aspects of this twisted tale that will rock you, shock you, and keep you breaking but aching for more. 

 

"I fought for you, but you know what you fought for? Vengeance. Retribution. Revenge."

In the end of beginning of it all, this book was a complicated story about love that's lost and found, that thrived in the darkest parts of our hearts—

The Paper Swan folded me like an origami crane; tugging, twisting, crumpling, smoothing, my thoughts and emotions. I felt it all, reading this story: the shock of lives gone wrong, the hurt of betrayal, the warring of good and evil, of right and wrong, good and bad, of love and hate.  

"You can either choose love or you can choose hate, because where one lives the other will die."

"A haunting tale of passion, loss, and redemption, The Paper Swan is a darkly intense yet heartwarming love story, textured with grit, intrigue, and suspense." 

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