{"id":25732,"date":"2025-02-16T09:19:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T16:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/?p=25732"},"modified":"2025-02-16T09:19:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T16:19:00","slug":"lili-comes-to-herself-a-novel-by-zoe-carada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/?p=25732","title":{"rendered":"Lili Comes To Herself: A novel by Zoe Carada"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Cerebral, nuanced, and emotionally tense\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Carada\u2019s latest novel is a sharp meditation on selfhood and survival under an oppressive regime. Romania, 1986. Science prodigy Lili Danes dreams of time travel and saving John Lennon while suffocating in her Young Communist uniform. Home is a war zone and school a cage. University offers escape, but life\u2019s chaos and an anti-romance force her to face her future. Can she still choose her own path?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Carada excels in exploring Lili\u2019s psychological and ideological entrapment. Caught between the state\u2019s demands and family expectations, Lili drifts through life, shaped more by circumstance than choice. A refuge with Vlad soon reveals itself as another form of constraint: \u201cShe was just a quiet video tape viewer. Maybe knitting along. Maybe she was touched by Vlad\u2019s loyalty and wanted to reward him by gifting herself to him.\u201d Dialogue pulses with emotion, revealing Lili\u2019s struggle to connect and reclaim agency. Her academic ambitions, once freeing, are entangled in the system\u2019s compromises. In the end, there\u2019s no rebellion; just quiet resistance as she fights to stay true to herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A powerful exploration of identity, choice, and survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lili-Comes-Herself-Zoe-Carada-ebook\/dp\/B0DM6PGCY4\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Buy now<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">Pub date December 21, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">ISBN 3000812962<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">Price $11.99 (USD) Paperback, $0.99 Kindle edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cerebral, nuanced, and emotionally tense\u2026 Carada\u2019s latest novel is a sharp meditation on selfhood and survival under an oppressive regime. Romania, 1986. Science prodigy Lili Danes dreams of time travel and saving John Lennon while suffocating in her Young Communist uniform. Home is a war zone and school a cage. University offers escape, but life\u2019s chaos and an anti-romance force her to face her future. Can she still choose her own path? Carada excels in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145610851,"featured_media":25735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[7223,91,3328,178,1747,4405817,1136176,723770684,723770683,91586,1473,1008073,856121,309,349],"class_list":["post-25732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-author","tag-blogging","tag-book-reviews","tag-books","tag-fiction","tag-fiction-book-review","tag-indie-books","tag-lili-comes-to-herself-a-novel","tag-lili-comes-to-herself-a-novel-by-zoe-carada","tag-literary-fiction","tag-reading","tag-review-blog","tag-review-website","tag-reviews","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/lili.jpg?fit=266%2C425&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pajKJn-6H2","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/145610851"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25732"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25740,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25732\/revisions\/25740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprairiesbookreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}