The Immortalists

I read this on a recommendation and wasn't disappointed.

One of those addictive, page turning reads that you can't seem to put down.

And what an interesting premise!
4 siblings visit a fortune teller as children and she predicts the exact days of their death.
What follows is a vivid journey into self-fulfilling prophecy and the battles faced.

Fantastic book. Four adolescent Jewish siblings in 1969 NYC visit a woman who told each of them the exact date on which they would die. None of them ever forgot their death date and they all reacted in different ways as to how they would live their lives with that knowledge. Each section of the book follows one sibling, from the earliest to die to the last. Throughout their stories, we also learn more about their relationships with their parent and siblings, as kids as well as at present. I thought the premise of the book to be very unique and it went much deeper than I was expecting. I found myself pondering how I would have lived my life knowing when it would end.

disbelief: suspended
pay-out: pretty good

i get why people were a little disappointed with this book. it markets itself as more of an adventure/thriller novel with the premise that all four characters know when they're going to die. however, the immortalists turns out to be more of a book about human nature, and i really liked that.

my only gripe is that varya's life and chapters seemed very disconnected from the rest of the siblings, and left me wanting more from the finale. while the other three were very interconnected in how they shaped each other's lives and deaths, there seemed to be little to no effect on varya, which made me sad. perhaps that is simply the life of an eldest sibling.