One of the purposes of this social media involvement is shameless self-promotion in pursuit of book sales. Of course. Hardly needs saying, right? So, in pursuit of this purpose, I will tell you about Netgalley.
Netgalley is a website where books are read and reviewed by book advocates and book industry insiders, and The Téuta’s Child is available to members there as an Advance Review Copy (an ARC). Reviews have been coming in, and one of them has a sentence that felt—well, to me it felt sweet and rich: the reviewer said this: “I didn’t want to put it down.”
I didn’t want to. Not, thank goodness, “I couldn’t put it down”, the review that writers of page-turner novels usually want. To me that sounds like a book that’s just a little too aggressively clingy. But the way Ms. Park said it is softer. It sounds as though she could put it down. She could always put it down, whenever she wanted. But as she read, she just never found a time when she wanted to.
It hadn’t occurred to me to hope for praise like that until I read her review. Now that I know that kind of praise can be imagined, though, it’s what I want. I hope that’s what she meant.
Here’s her complete review (by Jamie C., described on her Twitter page as “Teacher, librarian, consumer health specialist, writer, professional cat lady, and gardener.”
“This was wonderful! Thank you so much for the ARC.
I loved this tale of an ancient village and an amazing blind child finding a way to survive. I loved every single character. I didn’t want to put it down.
I found this to be a wonderful reminder that we are not any different from our ancestors even the ones from 8000 (or more) years ago. We might have technology and medicine but we still fail to understand children with disabilities. We still let corrupt people lead us. We still have close bonds with our families and friends.
And we still love babies.”
She gave me 5 stars. Really, really nice feeling.
