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As with most books I’ve enjoyed recently, I doubted whether I would actually enjoy it because it’s something I wouldn’t have chose for myself. Kantika was a journey that sucked you in. It was gritty and complex. It taught you something about family, hardship and perseverance.

I adored following Rebecca from Constantinople to Barcelona to settling in America. Her journey was never easy but it was hard to not admire Rebecca’s tenacity and her ability to make the best of what lay ahead of her. As she said, you have one life to live and she seemed to have lived a hundred of them. I learned a lot about how Jewish people were consistently ousted from country to country, across oceans and divided. The disruption of that was never understated in this book, the difficulties of immigrating and starting a new life weren’t sugarcoated.

Arguably the most interesting portion of the book was the dynamic of Luna and Rebecca. Their push-and-pull gave each of them a means to improve. It deepened my understanding of Rebecca when we saw her from Luna’s point of view. It was also nice to hear Luna’s perspective as disabled voices can often be buried in favour of their able bodied counterparts.