It’s been a while since I finished a book that I was really looking forward to reading for it to turn out to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year. While the love story (and I use that term loosely) is an allegory for the change in Germany, I found myself too irritated by how irrational both parties were acting. I realize that this may be a personal issue but overall I feel like I wasted my time reading a rather clunky translation of a story that required more side research about Germany history than I initially thought I would need.