PositiveCompulsive ReaderSegovia excels in depicting preschoolers’ worlds of sensation and emotion ... Sofia Segovia uses interior monologue, an excellent technique for showing readers what goes on in characters’ hearts and minds. Sometimes, though, the time shifts in a character’s thoughts make the story hard to follow. In some sections it takes careful reading to distinguish between the recent past and the less recent past. Segovia could have put the wartime parts of the story in the present and the older characters’ memories in the past, but perhaps use of the present would have spoiled the story’s \'once upon a time\' quality. Throughout the novel, Segovia piques the reader’s interest with \'flashes forward\' to Ilse’s and Arno’s post-war lives. It is reassuring to know that they have a future while we are turning the pages to see how they get there. Overall, Tears of Amber is an engaging historical novel which enlightens readers while entertaining them.
