I had a very mixed experience reading Katherine Locke's This Rebel Heart, set in the city of Budapest before, during, and after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

For me, the strength of the novel was in its depiction of the historical context surrounding this event  - incorporating the then very recent history of the Holocaust, which decimated Budapest's Jewish population. Locke - who is Jewish but not Hungarian - handles this history with care and sensitivity, and there are some great lines that resonated with me at the time I read them. The historical context was a big reason why I continued reading this.

But in my opinion, there were two ways in which This Rebel Heart fell short - characterisation, and magical realism (which is a genre I've had a lot of difficulty with in the past, but that's beside the point).

I'll talk about the characterisation issue first. For me, good characterisation is essential to my enjoyment of a fiction book- because if the author doesn't make you care about the characters, why should you care about what happens to them? And that was the problem here. The three central characters - Csilla first and foremost, but Tamás, and Azriel too - did not feel like real people. The way they spoke, both to others and among themselves, felt too formal, and often the phrases they used felt like philosophical musings than natural conversation. In Azriel's case, this is excusable given he is

literally the angel of death

, but to me, this excessive formality kept them at a distance. I also felt that the

polyamorous relationship that developed between Csilla, Tamás, and Azriel, while important for the sake of representation, lacked chemistry

.

Now we come to the magical realism aspects. I know there are some people who love this genre - but, as I mentioned above, I am not one of them. I do, however, enjoy fantasy, and I feel that the difference between that and magical realism is that fantasy doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is, and the rules are clearly established from the outset. With magical realism, it seems to me the rules are that there are no rules, and that's my issue. With This Rebel Heart, I suspect Locke intended the magical realist aspects -

the city of Budapest is literally coloured black and white, the Danube River, the golem, and probably other aspects that I don't remember

- to be metaphors and symbols, representative of other things, but for me, they just didn't make any sense. I thought that the

river metaphors

were overdone, and I didn't always know how to make sense of them. Maybe my brain is too literal, who knows?

Katherine Locke deserves a great deal of credit for writing about a part of history that doesn't get the attention it should, but for me, This Rebel Heart did not work.

This book is basically a blend of magic and myth and history and it feels pretty unique for a young adult book. I can't really think of that many books that are like it. Most of the events that happen are based on true historical events, with a little leeway when it comes to the retelling and the more fantastical elements.

As expected, this book gets heavy emotionally, set after WWII and heavily discussed the oppression of Hungarian Jews during and after the war. But even with all of the emotional elements, Locke is still able to feature moments of joy. While I didn't necessarily always understand everything that was going on (especiallly when it came to the magical parts; I think this is partly because I listened to it instead), I was captivated by this story. Highly recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction with a little bit of magical realism.

When I say this book emotionally devastated me, I mean that I was sobbing so hard I could not breathe. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was not something that was ever covered in any of my history classes, so I went into this with no idea of what to expect. Csilla's grief, trauma, and survivor's guilt are visceral on every page and the book does not pull any punches about the brutalities of war, what it means to have friends and loved ones on the other side of the fight, and the anti-semitism Jews faced in the aftermath of the holocaust.

Even with the brutal backdrop of a city on the cusp of revolt, the story is beautiful. The slow, careful unfurling of color, the soft tenderness of Csilla's bond with Azriel and Tamas. Csilla's friendship with Zsu and Azil and how they support each other even through their differences.

From start to finish, the book was stunning. Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.