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Well.

This book was honestly a big disappointment. For one thing, the entire premise felt so far-fetched...that two people who had a teenage romance that was a only few weeks long (and they didn't even know each other before that) could pine for each other for 60 years felt really hard to believe. Sure, they might have genuinely loved and cared about each other, but they also barely knew each other. Just, no.

But also? The main character, Roya, was such a flat character. You don't get much emotion from her at all and I had almost no investment in her story. There were parts where I felt sad for her, but mostly she just came across as very unfeeling and uninteresting. She pined her whole life for her teenage love and then got married but never seemed to actually love her husband. If she did, it doesn't come across at all in the narrative.

Mostly this book felt like a sob story about how Roya didn't get the life she wanted and had to settle for marrying an American dude she didn't love. Walter seemed like a really nice guy but she never seemed to have any genuine feelings for him. And yeah, not all stories have happy endings, but the whole time I was reading this I just couldn't figure out what the author was going for.

Things I did like - the descriptions of food, learning more about Persian/Iranian culture, and Roya's family. I also think the author had some lovely turns of phrase, and some of the passages were really lovely. But overall the book just fell flat for me.