3.5 Stars, rounding 4. I suspect this book will probably play best for readers who have their own "one who got away" and spend time wondering "what if?" I liked that it spanned nearly a hundred years, toggling between Tehran, California and Boston, but did so in a way that felt timeless. (I sometimes get put-off by historical fiction if the voice feels archaic – not the case with this.) It helped make the Iranian coup of 1953 come to life for me; in some ways this novel reminded me of Next Year in Havana, setting a romance on a backdrop of political unrest, so if you were a fan of that, you'd probably enjoy this book too.