This is some of the most beautiful writing ever. The characters felt very flat. The storyline was very difficult to follow.

I did not enjoy the novel.

It is the end of the Great Depression and Elle Ranier believes that by marrying her wealthy husband Simon she is saving her life. Young and impressionable, she is unable to foresee the true cost of her decision. Instead, she leaves everything she has known in New York City to live in a vine-covered mansion on the tangled shores of Lyra, an island off America's south-eastern coast. There, amid the wild horses, oak woods and rumours of jewels hidden beneath the water, Elle harbours a secret. Her so-called 'cousin' Gabriel, who comes to stay, is really a boyfriend from back home and the love of her life.

I couldn’t find any redeeming feature for this novel. I loathed the characters, the setting and the darkness of the book.

Rony

Elite Reviewing Group received a copy of the book to review.

Beautiful cover gorgeous writing so haunting so real.A book that drew me in kept me. Turning the pages.The author is so talented her prose her characters kept me reading late into the night.#netgalley #Thestarsarenot yetbells.

A gorgeous cover and expectations of a beautiful story following Elle Rainer as she reminisces about her lift on the mysterious island of Lyra.
This book is so slow and the content not particularly gripping, so I never felt like I was invested in this book at all. Not a bad read, just not one I would pick up again.

The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, is a poetic novel depicting a woman called Elle who is in later years and is struggling with dementia. Her illness means her past is often more real to her than the present day. She lives on an island off the coast of Georgia called Lyra. She lives with husband, Simon and has done ever since the 1930s when they first arrived as the US was in its final months of the Great Depression. With them is Elle’s lover Gabriel. They are living a precarious life where Gabriel is posing as Elle’s cousin. They originally arrived to mine jewels from the sea bed, the water so clear they can be seen all around the island’s coast.

The structure of the novel is interesting and creates a snapshot of Elle’s inner world perfectly. We are told the story of the married couple’s life on Lyra, which spans fifty years. However. the story is told in fits and starts. Coming from Elle’s damaged recollections there are long, meandering tales and quick statements that only cover a line or two.. This is how her mind is making sense of her world. Her affair with Gabriel is passionate, whereas her relationship with Simon was arranged and the marriage doesn’t rouse any feeling in her.This is a brilliant way of depicting the disease, by putting us inside her head so we can experience her confusion.

Having worked in a dementia unit I know how difficult it is for patients who know something is wrong but don’t know how to correct it. Their sadness and grief when their illness is explained to them or they realise a loved one is gone, is heart-breaking..There are times when she doesn’t even recognise her children and the author brilliantly portrays their frustration and despair, as they lose their mother slowly, one bit at a time. There are chapters between this where strange ghostly beings appear to her. as well as fairies,

Decay and deterioration are strong themes here, with their linked emotions of loss and sadness. There is a secret though, buried so deep in Elle’s past and lost in the corrupted files that make up her faulty memory. This secret is one seismic event, waiting for her like.a sink hole, slowly consuming everything. This event changed Elle forever and as she shuffles through her past memories we get closer and closer to it. When we get there it has the potential to drag Elle into another time and place. It could also change her family forever too,

This really is a beautifully written book where the realities and unrealities of dementia are so carefully rendered. It’s a short book, but it packs an emotional punch. I was transported to Lyra and Elle’s beach with a blue glow. The setting is ethereal and dream-like, rather like Elle’s memories and although it isn’t an easy read at times, it is unique and memorable,

The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, is a haunting, poetic and lyrical book about a woman trapped deep inside her past. Elle, a woman suffering with dementia in her twilight years, lives on Lyra, an island off the coast of Georgia. She and her husband, Simon arrived there just after the Great Depression, with Gabriel, Elle’s lover, who is masquerading as her cousin. They have moved there to mine for the jewels which shimmer in the sea bed around the island and Simon, whose father has insisted he undertakes what seems like folly, is dedicated to the task.

Spanning fifty years or so we learn of Elle and Simon’s life together on Lyra. Told through vignettes of memories pulled from Elle’s muddled recollections, we learn of her passion and love for Gabriel and her arranged loveless marriage to Simon. These moments are sometimes described in a few sentences, other times there are pages of memories. The reader is inside Elle’s head, and we are therefore privy to her confusion.

It is a heart-breaking place to be. At times, she is lucid, at others she thinks she is lost in the past, looking for people who have long since died. She doesn’t always recognise her children and we can feel their frustration and distress at the slow degeneration of their mother. Interspersed with this are visions of almost spectral beings, of fairies and of the wildlife and nature which surrounds their property as being a living breathing thing. And in the background is the blue luminescence which glows beneath the sea bed. Much like the green light in The Great Gatsby, this is both a symbol of hope and a symbol of destruction.

In fact, the whole book is about destruction and decay. There is an overarching sense of loss and sadness within these pages. Buried deep in Elle’s past is a seismic moment which is like a black hole consuming all of her being and forever changing her. As she sorts through her memories we are taken closer and closer to it, before being swept away into another time and place.

This really is a beautiful book in which every word is carefully and deliberately placed. It is short, coming in at around 230 pages but it packs so much into it. I felt utterly transported to Lyra and to the beach surrounded by a blue glow. It reminded me a little of The Paper Palace and Tigers in Red Weather in its ambience, but it is definitely its own book. The writing is almost ethereal and other-worldly, and at times is astonishingly good. Recommended.

A prophetic fever dream sprung from a singular imagination. Hannah Lillith Assadi is an incomparable stylist and a fearless storyteller. Great writing, great characters and a great storyline. Time to clear your schedule for the afternoon, coffee pot on and phone turned off - you won’t want to put this one down. This was a compelling and thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish with a great storyline,

The language and the style of writing are fabulous, the author can surely play with words.
The book is heartbreaking and riveting, the travel in the mind of a woman suffering from dementia.
There's plenty of poetic images, memories.
It's sad and it's fascinating, I loved it.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Love, loss, and the search for mysterious blue stones loom large in this novel told by Elle who is struggling with dementia. It's 1997 and she's still living on the island off the coast of Georgia where she moved with her husband Simon, who was obsessed by the mythical stones, in 1941. She muses about Simon, about Gabriel (a former lover who posed as her cousin), and about her mental health over the years. It moves back and forth in time. It will also, given the situation, make the reader question the reliability of the narration. I'm sure to be the odd one out but this felt both familiar and overwritten. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Assadi has spent more time on the prose than on the plot but fans of literary fiction might give this a try.

A gorgeous title and a gorgeous cover. A very simple story about a woman suffering from dementia. It is a tale so lyrical and so poetically evocative that at times the prose reminds me of André Aciman's style, but it's still very much its own. The language is absolutely stunning and even overshadowed the plot often.

The Stars Are Not Yet Bells is an evocative novel that whisks you away to another world.

Assadi's prose is haunting and compelling, 'diaphanous as a dream' (to borrow some of her own words). Elle's voice is deliciously disorientating, as Assadi strikes that difficult balance between the world as it really is and the illusions of dementia. The intoxicating island of Lyra is almost a character in its own right, its prescence casting a shadow over all Elle's memories. The comparisons to Wide Sargasso Sea are not far off.

Heartbreakingly beautiful, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells is a real must-read.