I found myself liking this book quite a bit more than I thought I would. It's mostly because I don't often read about refugee stories that aren't nonfiction. I definitely enjoyed the characters, they felt realistic and definitely made the story entertaining and interesting. It's definitely worth reading.

A book comes along now and again that lets your heart sing and rejoice about the human spirit.
Here Casts No Shadow is one such book and if it wasn't for the opportunity to obtain an ARC this wonderful story may have passed me by altogether.
I hope no reading this review will make a similar mistake. This is a book that is not only worth reading it will give a certain bounce to your life.
Sadly we are often put off stories of refugees and asylum seekers by the camps in France or the crowds of humanity treking across Europe. We have often become harden by political rhetoric and fears about immigration and a UK which would be better outside Europe to control our borders.
This book is not 'an in your face' one, liberal treatise of embracing all peoples, it is the fictional account of one family's life in a made-up world where the bombs and suffering are very real.
I guess in taking to refugees and listening to their stories it was not so much what to include but what to leave out for the author. In the process they have woven fact into fiction to produce a telling account of when the first hopes of freedom result in oppression, indiscriment murder of their own people by a regime that will do anything to maintain power. It is about fear, about bombs dropped by your own government and the decision to flee your home, community and country for a chance to live.
It is about life in a refugee camp; more shortages and a gradual erosion of family life. Finally it is the final hope of a better place to live and be able to be yourself and experience a freedom to live in peace and dignity.
The writing is gentle and even paced; initially changing from the horrors of the past to the reality of their new status in a new country. Even when the previous life unravels and death stalks the very shops and streets they inhabit the writing is descriptive but not judgemental - it records events how one might remember them leaving the anxiety and stress to invade one's day dreaming and night terrors.
Both stories; the past and the present start with some joy; the beauty of snow flakes and friendships but in both accounts the initial conflict is seen in its present unfolding and in the damaged lives of those who have survived into their present. Lives are scarred and damaged with PTSD and coping behaviours. Friendships strained and family structures closed and more secretive. Life goes on but we quickly learn that these people are who they are today because of the past. The things they have been seen and done, the lack of justice and accountability that is unlikely to be reconciled.
The two stories are quite harmonious and are cleverly interwoven into events then and now.
The characters are fictional but very real, and are neither heroes nor villans, but human beings with frailities and prone to breakdown.
I liked especially that the book has no political leanings, nor any judgement views. It sees the conflict as a collapse of civilization where any death on all sides is a loss, the loss of a child, parent or loved one.
I had not heard of the author previously but I feel blessed to have stumbled across this book.