| GOODREADS | MY RATING: ♥ ♥|

Goodreads synopsis: Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery – he has never been told how or where it took place and has only a distant memory of his mother.

But he knows that the fate of his grandfather’s brother, Einar, is somehow bound up with this mystery. One day a coffin is delivered for his grandfather long before his death – a meticulous, beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Perhaps Einar is not dead after all.

Edvard’s desperate quest to unlock the family’s tragic secrets takes him on a long journey – from Norway to the Shetlands, and to the battlefields of France – to the discovery of a very unusual inheritance. The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is about the love of wood and finding your own self, a beautifully intricate and moving tale that spans an entire century.

My thoughts:

I wish Goodreads had the ability to let us readers give half stars in rating. I would really need that function right now because I can’t decide if I want to give it a two star or a three star rating. Don’t get me wrong, I kind of liked the book. It was just so damn slow and that (in the end, no spoiler) mostly evolved around some threes just made it unbelievable. I could not connect with it and even though it was an interesting and kind of fun puzzle game regarding the family history, it was just not enough. I didn’t even like the main character that much.

I believe that if I hadn’t had the audiobook, I would have struggled to finish. It was just so tedious, I didn’t like the main character, who apparently cannot have a non-sexual relationship with women and the ending was quite unclear. Much better to listen, but the book itself was not as good as I had expected.

Gold star for the nice writing. I thought that was really good and Mytting did a great job with it.