All the while they keep their love a secret, as Tatiana’s strong sense of family loyalty forbids her from causing her sister pain. Tatiana and Alexander sneak time together where they can – he walks her home from her work, he brings the family supplies that he’s entitled to as an officer and he defends her from her family that belittle her. This chance meeting flowers into a passion and then an all consuming love complicated by many things, namely the fact that Alexander is already involved with someone – Tatiana’s older sister Dasha. This attracts the attention of Alexander Belov, an officer of the Army who is drawn to her blonde, fresh beauty. She finds this to be more difficult than she expects so she stops for a moment to enjoy an ice cream on a nice day. Her older sister Dasha works and her father is getting her twin brother Pasha out of Leningrad to avoid him having to sign up to the Red Army so the task of shopping falls to Tatiana. The rumours are swirling and she’s given money by her family and told to go out and buy as much food as she can so that they can prepare. Tatiana Metanova is almost 17 and living in Leningrad, Russia (now known once again as St Petersburg) on the brink of Germany invading. However the story sucked me in and I was done in a couple of days. Because it’s quite a hefty novel (some 650-odd pages) and because I had to start Anna Karenina for uni, which is also a hefty novel (830-odd pages) I did intend to pace myself reading this one throughout the month. A couple of blogging friends and I seemed to be in the same boat so we organised to do a read-a-long for July. I’ve read a couple of Paullina Simons books in the past but somehow I’d never gotten around to reading what is no doubt one of her more popular and famous novels – The Bronze Horseman.

The bronze horseman novel