

- Literary Fiction, Contemporary, War
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick biologist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to give up, settle down, and start a family. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides uninfluenced by feminism and modernity. Nastia and her sister Solomiya are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother—a flamboyant protestor who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. So begins a journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt as Russia invades.
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Character
Contemporary, classical in form, overwhelming and grave.
- contemporarynostalgic
- classical in formformally daring
- cooloverwhelming
- gravecomic
- contemplativerelentless
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About the book
- Author
- Maria Reva
- First published
- 2025
- Pages
- 352
- Publisher
- Little, Brown Book Group Limited, Doubleday, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Editions
- 3
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780385545310
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On Open Library, 1 have read it and 4 want to.
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