The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter: A Novel

It's a touching look on humanity and what life means.

As someone who would absolutely say yes to a Faustian bargain, I really enjoyed this book, and admire the author for the Herculean task of covering hundreds of years of history. I loved the Black history and its heroes highlighted in this story, and learned a lot from the perspective. I think this is one of the main things that sets it apart from a book with a similar plot that I admittedly love, "The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue" by V.E. Schwab (which is also not perfect.) My primary frustration with this book is that love always comes so instantly and easily to the ever-beautiful Nella, over and over again, it's basically love at first sight every time and she stays with her partners for many blissful years or loses them tragically early. No slow falling out of love, no drifting apart, no cheating, no death by a 1000 cuts that almost all of us experience at least once or twice in our short, human lives. Added to this, there isn't a lot of dialogue, and the stories within the story start to feel repetitive and a little too good to be true and cutesy. There's a lot of telling, and I would have liked more showing, but again, the author had a long, long time period to cover and I enjoyed the richness of the different historical periods.