The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem: A Novel Kindle Edition

I loved, loved, loved this book. I had watched the Netflix series and wanted to read the book. I was not disappointed. The book tells the story of Ermosa women and their inability to find real love. It is bold and rich with a historical perspective of life in Palestine before the Jewish state was established. Each character is complex, with the emotional experiences related to life in all its various hues. I found myself thinking of how women have been the unspoken foundations of families throughout history and that without the love and support of these women, there would be no family legacies or stories to pass on to the next generations. It’s a powerful story that will leave you thinking about your relationships with the women in your family and the sacrifices they made for those they love.

At the beginning, I found this book to be too much detail. After a while it became a fast read. The story is a very sad story. It is about three generations of women who marry men that don't love them and men who regret not going after their true loves. They allow others to walk all over them and religion to dictate their lives. The story now deals with Luna and her daughter Gabriela who never get along with each other until Luna is dying. When Luna dies Gabriela regrets not giving her mother the love that is needed. Gabriela learns of their history through grandmother, great aunt and two aunts how the great-grandmother, grandmother and mother are cursed with marriages without love. As a result of this Gabriela wants to break that cycle and keep the man that truly loves her. Personally I think this is still common where we have the notion that we are supposed to get married and have children; however, we never really think through what happens after the wedding. Today we have choices and if you don't think something is right in your relationship you have the choice.

While the facts of events leading to the establishment of Israel are readily accessible, tracing four generations of a Sephardic family's journey through two world wars, the Great Depression, the transfer of power from the sultanate to the British after WWI, the Holocaust and then the influx of Jews from the camps into what would become Israel, the paramilitary Jewish fighters for independence, the changing relationships among the Jewish and Moslem neighbors living side by side in what was then Palestine, as it was partitioned, and then into the 1970's. The novel, through the lens of generations of a religious Sephardic family, puts flesh on the bones of the facts of the history. Of special interest is the fact that my Sephardic family immigrated to America at the time this story begins so the insight into their family dynamics were so I enjoyed comparing their arc to my families'.

This book completely swept me away. The story is lush as it covers three generations of women in Jerusalem, beginning in the early 1900s and working its way to the 1970s. I confess, the ending felt a little rushed and I wasn't completely satisfied for it, but the rest of the book is so exquisite, I still give it five stars and highly recommend it. This is what historical fiction should be!

I liked the book for the most part! I don’t know much about everything happening politically in Jerusalem throughout the decades the book covers, so some things may have been lost on me. I did make every attempt to stop and look up the history as I read just to better educate myself.I think this may have lead to my confusion with EVERY Single characters’ age throughout the story. In fact half way through the book I started over skimming through and highlighting in yellow anything that would help me figure out how old everyone was. I continued doing this throughout the rest of the book. And this revealed some mistakes! Time lines were not matching up or making any sense! That was one of the more annoying things -not knowing how old anyone is at any time while things are happening or how they were trying to make mid 30 year olds sound like they were in their 70’s.I loved the stories about the 4 different women and their retrospective husband’s lives, but the stories were often cut short. Too many important story lines were just left with no closure. No ending. The writing was very choppy and I feel like there were characters we should have learned much more about or at least learned what happened to them instead of never mentioning them again.I’m glad I read it, but I’m underwhelmed. The ending felt really lazy, hurried and slapped on.

So, the book is nothing like the show. If you’re looking for that, you’ll be shocked how much the stories diverge for pretty much every single character. That said, Luna is consistently frustrating, both in show and book. She’s selfish and self-centered, and I find her relationship with Rosa and everyone’s constant enabling really irritating. That poor woman Rosa, never an opportunity for agency for her. I liked the book, as some others said, it had slow points. But it’s an interesting generational tale.

This is an amazingly well written book.Grips you from the start.Yishi Levy is an excellent author & I hope she continues to write.It’s romantic drama & history.The characters come alive.I learned so much of Jerusalems history!Recommend as an excellent read!

There are bags under my eyes from staying up too long to read “just one more chapter.”I thoroughly enjoyed this story of the Ermosa family, told differently than Netflix’s version. Unlike other reviewers here, I’m not upset that some of the characters aren’t “likable.” The book doesn’t claim to be a fairy tale or romance novel. The characters are vivid and real.I will agree that the ending seems quite abrupt, and I personally would have liked a more gradual closure, but overall the book is a journey on which I am happy I embarked.