#levine querido

Themes: Fantasy, Jewish folklore, Gender switching/Cross dressing

Overall, I thought the book was well paced, told an interesting story and featured interesting characters. I quite enjoyed reading it, especially as it was about Jewish characters and culture, which are topics I have not read much about, and thus know far less about than I really should. The setting was described in such lovely detail that I always felt myself transported into the story after only a few words.

One part that felt off to me was the end, where everything just happened too fast. The revelation of who Sam is came out of nowhere and could've been set up better. As is, he was just set up to maybe be a bit weird, but hardly any hints at his supernatural nature.

Another part that struck me as odd was the times where Sorel, in her disguise, interacted with people she knew from before her escape. While for some, the reasoning that people don't recognise her because it doesn't even enter their minds to think that Sorel could be cross-dressing and living like a homeless person holds, for others it became a bit unbelievable that they would notice absolutely nothing. I think it would've also helped believability if Sorel had been at all nervous in these situations, but I didn't really notice anything like that, which kind of took me out of the story.

Lastly, as someone who isn't Jewish and doesn't know much about Jewish culture, I found myself struggling with some of the terms used. Oftentimes I could kinda work out what a word meant from the context, or, in the case of Yiddish words, from being a native German speaker, but I think it could be helpful to have a short glossary of the Jewish cultural and religious terms used.

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Thank you to Levine Querido for the ARC

Wonderfully queer and profoundly Jewish @mosslamb 's "When the Angels Left the Old Country" from @LevineQuerido is a must read in 2023.

I blasted through this book mostly in a single night. It is not only incredibly well written, but also a very fun read that is maddeningly hard to put down. The characters are rich and extremely memorable and the plot never wavers even when there are multiple subplots to intertwine, but let’s back up a bit. “When the Angels Left the Old Country” is a queer, Jewish mystery steeped in the…

Tycho Zeling is drifting through his life. Everything in it – school, friends, girls, plans for the future – just kind of . happens. Like a movie he presses play on, but doesn't direct. So Tycho decides to break away from everything. He flies to America to spend his summer as a counselor at a summer camp, for international kids. It is there that Oliver walks in, another counselor, from Norway. And it is there that Tycho feels his life stop, and begin again, finally, as his.