Categories: Christian Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Romance, Friendship
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
February 4, 2003, is just another day for Olivia Ross—a greeting card writer whose passion project is a screenplay of her own. After she and a handsome, struggling actor have a near-magic encounter in a coffee shop, they make a spontaneous pact: in ten years, after they’ve found the success they’re just sure they’re going to achieve, they’ll return to the coffeehouse to partner up and make a film together. The only problem? Olivia neglected to get the stranger’s name. But she doesn’t forget the date.
For the next ten years, every February 4, Olivia has an exceptional day, full of coincidences and ironies. As men come and go and return to her life, and as she continues to write her screenplay, she still wonders about the guy from the coffee shop—the nameless actor she’s almost certain was Hamish McDougal, now a famous member of the Hollywood elite.
But a lot can happen in ten years, and while waiting for the curtain to rise on her fate, the true story of Olivia’s life is being written—and if she’s not careful, she’ll completely miss the epic romance playing out right before her eyes.
I love the cover!
This story follows Olivia Ross for ten years on every February 4th because something happens to her on that date that solidified it as a special day. I thought this concept was pretty cool, it definitely made me want to keep reading to see if the day mention ten years into the future will play out as Olivia hoped.
This is a slow burn, very clean romance – the only thing that happens are a few kisses.
Olivia and Fi’s best friend relationship is the long lasting one in this story. It goes through a few bumps here and there but ultimately they are besties forever.
There are a few men that come into Olivia’s life but Liam was the one that got away – or did he? It’s complicated, let’s just leave it at that.
I thought the plot twist was cute and really unexpected. I was hoping for something bigger but it turned out okay in the end.
I didn’t realize this was Christian fiction until I saw it in the thread in Goodreads. I don’t read Christian fiction but this one was really cute. Thing is, there was nothing about faith in this book, so I’m a bit confused about that. Was it “fate” or “faith” that brings Olivia all the way to February 4, 2013?
As for Olivia’s love life, it was getting a bit tiring for me. Obviously we know who is the best guy for her, and she knows it but always too late and always pushing him away when he is trying to move on? I was getting annoyed with her – I wanted her to make up her mind.
I found this story to be am engaging read especially since every chapter is a February 4th with something interesting always happening to Olivia Ross. Plot Twist is a light hearted, slow burn romance with a very fun and unique premise.
Categories: Contemporary, Romance, Sailing, Grief, Mental Health
Critically acclaimed author Trish Doller’s unforgettable and romantic adult debut about setting sail, starting over, and finding yourself…
Since the loss of her fiancé, Anna has been shipwrecked by grief—until a reminder goes off about a trip they were supposed to take together. Impulsively, Anna goes to sea in their sailboat, intending to complete the voyage alone.
But after a treacherous night’s sail, she realizes she can’t do it by herself and hires Keane, a professional sailor, to help. Much like Anna, Keane is struggling with a very different future than the one he had planned. As romance rises with the tide, they discover that it’s never too late to chart a new course.
In Trish Doller’s unforgettable Float Plan, starting over doesn’t mean letting go of your past, it means making room for your future.
Love the cover because it’s so bright and yellow. Makes you think of a happy story and yet Anna our main character is dealing with grief throughout the book.
I related to Anna’s grief a lot because I lost my first husband in my late 20’s. So everything she felt, I’ve been through but I like that even though the topic is heavy – Anna being on the water, learning how to sail and navigate foreign waters was therapeutic not only for her as a character but me as a reader. It keep her moving forward, working through the grief and I appreciated that about the story. Also the dog she adopts, Queenie? I wouldn’t have gotten through my grief without my dogs. 💗 They are angels on earth.
Keane, her crew mate and eventually lover is the sweetest. I love how good he is, not only to her, but overall. Even with his own challenges about his past, his kindness is beautiful. Anna needed that.
I found all the sailing terminology go over my head because I am not a sailor but I loved learning what I could and imagining what each part of the boat is. I loved that Anna had to learn to sail because Keane wasn’t in her plans for the path home. She did it, even if she was scared. As for me, I’d suck at sailing ~ I need my comforts like a bed, a shower every day haha and internet but the idea of roughing it out there under the stars every night sounds amazing.
The setting of this book is really fantastic. I’m an island girl, I live in Hawaii, but I’m not a sailor and I have never sailed to any of the islands nearby, I think our waters are very different from the Caribbean where you can reach so many different islands, daily. So I loved island hopping with Anna and Keane! I hope to visit these islands one day and learn more about the history and people that live there. I’m glad they mentioned how the slavery trade made an impact there.
Even though Anna is grieving I didn’t feel immersed in her grief while reading this, maybe because the sailing keeps her moving. She was never really stuck and I know being stuck and grieving is one of the scariest places to be. So this book didn’t trigger me as much as I thought it would, which I liked!
I do like how Anna and Keane’s relationship progressed very slowly but for the most part, they are friends. They don’t flirt a lot with another, and that’s to respect Anna’s space as she grieves, but when they do get together, I don’t feel explosions – it’s more of a nice melting into one another that they do. It really feels like a friendship that blossoms into love, the sex is an added bonus, but you know it’s deeper than that with both of them. So don’t expect a lot of romance from the beginning of this book ~ this is Anna’s journey of grief.
As a romance book, this one is a slow burn and barely a burn at that, more like a comforting warmth by the end. As a book about a woman grieving her fiance and trying to move her life forward, I think it hit a lot of the right spots. Anna learns to sail and open her heart again on this adventure through the Caribbean. She hits some bumps along the way but ultimately she learns to navigate her life on her own again, with the help of Keane, and for someone who has experienced grief on that level, I found Anna’s journey inspirational.
Categories: WWII, Historical, Fiction, Holocaust, War, Romance
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Thank you to Graydon House for giving me a chance to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
With the thrilling pace and historical drama of Pam Jenoff and Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author Kelly Rimmer’s newest novel is an epic WWII saga and love story, based on the real-life efforts of two young people taking extraordinary risks to save their countrymen, as they try to find their way back to each other and the life they once knew.
Following on the success of The Things We Cannot Say, this is Kelly Rimmer’s return to the WWII category with a brand new novel inspired by Irena Sendler, the real-life Polish nurse who used her access to the Warsaw ghetto to smuggle Jewish children and babies to safety.
Spanning the tumultuous years between 1942 and 1945 in Poland, The Warsaw Orphan follows Emilia over the course of the war, her involvement with the Resistance, and her love for Sergiusz, a young man imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto who’s passion leads him to fight in the Warsaw Uprising. From the Warsaw ghetto to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, through Nazi occupation to the threat of a communist regime, Kelly Rimmer has penned her most meticulously researched and emotionally compelling novel to date.
Poland is ravaged on both sides in this war. The Soviet’s Red Army helps them liberate Poland from the Nazis but then the country comes under their rule. I definitely felt the anguish of the people of Poland and the exhaustion of never ending fighting for their country. We learn a lot about the Warsaw ghetto in Emilia’s (Elz-bieta) perspective being from outside the ghetto and Roman’s story from inside the ghetto.
Sara, the nurse who is helping smuggle children out of the ghetto is doing an amazing, stressful and life-threatening job. The story is loosely based on a real life nurse, Irena Sendler, who actually did smuggle children out of the Warsaw ghetto.
Through Roman, one of the main characters, we see his hunger to fight and keep fighting the Nazis and the Soviets. He is the anger in action. He joins the rebels who are fighting against the Nazis.
Emilia is an interesting character because she has a secret and she is very young in this venture of saving Jewish children in the ghetto. She’s only 14 and still so naive in some ways but she learns quickly. Emilia and Roman reminds us how kids grew up too fast in this time of war. By the end of this story one of them is tired of fighting and the tired wants to keep on. They do have a love story among the despair but even in the end I wasn’t sure if they would make it.
The ending is quite emotional, I felt for both Emilia, Roman and their friends who survived what the Nazis did to the whole of Europe.
Triggers: starvation, death, violence, mass executions, rape
This is a war story and it is graphic. There is a lot of visual accounts of the atrocities in the ghetto and concentration camp that is horrifying.
I learned a lot about the Warsaw ghetto from this book. This is an emotional and heartbreaking story. But there are strong characters in this sad story, and people fighting to do what they can to fight the Nazis and help the children that they could. It’s a story about an ugly time in history and a country being torn apart from the war and hope for a better day, one day with no fighting. If you enjoy historical fiction especially about World War II and the Holocaust, then you should read The Warsaw Orphan.
📚 ~ Yolanda
About the Author:
Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Before I Let You Go, The Things We Cannot Say, and Truths I Never Told You. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. Please visit her at https://www.kellyrimmer.com/
Facebook: @Kellymrimmer
Twitter: @KelRimmerWrites
Instagram: @kelrimmerwrites
Book Excerpt:
1
Roman
28 March, 1942
The human spirit is a miraculous thing. It is the strongest part of us—crushed under pressure, but rarely broken. Trapped within our weak and fallible bodies, but never contained. I pondered this as my brother and I walked to a street vendor on Zamenhofa Street in the Warsaw Ghetto, late in the afternoon on a blessedly warm spring day.
“There was one right there,” he said, pointing to a rare gap in the crowd on the sidewalk. I nodded but did not reply. Dawidek sometimes needed to talk me through his workday but he did not need me to comment, which was fortunate, because even after months of this ritual, I still had no idea what to say.
“Down that alleyway, there was one on the steps of a building. Not even on the sidewalk, just right there on the steps.”
I fumbled in my pocket, making sure I still had the sliver of soap my stepfather had given me. Soap was in desperate demand
in the ghetto, a place where overcrowding and lack of running water had created a perfect storm for illness. My stepfather ran a tiny dentistry practice in the front room of our apartment and needed the soap as much as anyone—maybe even more so. But as desperate as Samuel’s need for soap was, my mother’s need for food eclipsed it, and so there Dawidek and I were. It was generally considered a woman’s job to go to the market, but Mother needed to conserve every bit of strength she could, and the street vendor Samuel wanted me to speak to was blocks away from our home.
“…and Roman, one was behind a big dumpster,” he hesitated, then grimaced. “Except I think we missed that one yesterday.”
I didn’t ask how he’d come to that conclusion. I knew that the answer was liable to make my heart race and my vision darken, the way it did sometimes. Sometimes, it felt as if my anger was simmering just below the surface: at my nine-year-old brother and the rest of my family. Although, none of this was their fault. At Sala, my boss at the factory on Nowolipki Street, even though he was a good man and he’d gone out of his way to help me and my family more than once. At every damned German I laid eyes on. Always them. Especially them. A sharp, uncompromising anger tinged every interaction those days, and although that anger started and ended with the Germans who had changed our world, it cycled through everyone else I knew before it made its way back where it belonged.
“There was one here yesterday. In the middle of the road at the entrance to the market.”
Dawidek had already told me all about that one, but I let him talk anyway. I hoped this running commentary would spare him from the noxious interior that I was currently grappling with. I envied the ease with which he could talk about his day, even if hearing the details filled me with guilt. Guilt I could handle, I probably deserved it. It was the anger that scared me. I felt like my grip on control was caught between my sweaty hands and, at any given moment, all it would take was for someone to startle me, and I’d lose control.
The street stall came into view through the crowd. There was always a crush of people on the street until the last second before seven o’clock curfew. This was especially the case in summer, when the oppressive heat inside the ghetto apartments could bring people to faint, besides which, the overcrowding inside was no better than the overcrowding outside. I had no idea how many people were inside those ghetto walls—Samuel guessed a million, Mrs. Kuklin´ski in the bedroom beside ours said it was much more, Mother was quite confident that it was maybe only a hundred thousand. All I knew was that ours was not the only apartment in the ghetto designed for one family that was currently housing four—in fact, there were many living in even worse conditions. While the population was a hot topic of conversation on a regular basis, it didn’t actually matter all that much to me. I could see with my own eyes and smell with my own nose that however many people were trapped within the ghetto walls, it was far, far too many.
When the vendor’s table came into view, my heart sank: she was already packing up for the day and there was no produce left. I was disappointed but not surprised: there had been no chance of us finding food so late in the day, let alone food that someone would barter for a simple slip of soap. Dawidek and I had passed a store that was selling eggs, but they’d want zloty for the eggs, not a tiny scrap of soap.
“Wait here a minute,” I murmured to my brother, who shrugged as he sank to sit on an apartment stoop. I might have let him follow me, but even after the depths our family had sunk to over the years of occupation, I still hated for him to see me beg. I glanced at him, recording his location to memory, and then pushed through the last few feet of people mingling on the sidewalk until I reached the street vendor. She shook her head before I’d spoken a word.
“I am sorry young man; I have nothing to offer you.”
“I am Samuel Gorka’s son,” I told her. It was an oversimplification of a complicated truth, but it was the best way I could help her place me. “He fixed your tooth for you, remember? A few months ago? His practice is on Miła Street.”
Recognition dawned in her gaze, but she still regarded me warily.
“I remember Samuel and I’m grateful to him, but that doesn’t change anything. I have no food left today.”
“My brother and I…we work during the day. And Samuel too. You know how busy he is, helping people like yourself. But the thing is, we have a sick family member who hasn’t—”
“Kid, I respect your father. He’s a good man, and a good dentist. I wish I could help, but I have nothing to give you.” She waved to the table, to the empty wooden box she had packed up behind her, and then opened her palms towards me as if to prove the truth of her words.
“There is nowhere else for me to go. I can’t take no for an answer. I’m going to bed hungry tonight, but I can’t let…” I trailed off, the hopelessness hitting me right in the chest. I knew I would be going home without food for my mother that night, and the implications made me want to curl up in a ball, right there in the gutter. But hopelessness was dangerous, at least in part because it was always followed by an evil cousin. Hopelessness was a passive emotion, but its natural successor drove action, and that action rarely resulted in anything positive. I clenched my fists, and my fingers curled around the soap. I pulled it from my pocket and extended it towards the vendor. She looked from my palm to my face, then sighed impatiently and leaned close to me to hiss,
“I told you. I have nothing left to trade today. If you want food, you need to come earlier in the day.”
“That’s impossible for us. Don’t you understand?”
To get to the market early in the day one of us would have to miss work. Samuel couldn’t miss work; he could barely keep up as it was—he performed extractions from sunup to curfew most days. Rarely was this work paid now that money was in such short supply among ordinary families like his patients, but the work was important—not just because it afforded some small measure of comfort for a people group who were, in every other way, suffering immensely. But every now and again Samuel did a favor for one of the Jewish police officers or even a passing German soldier. He had a theory that one day soon, those favors were going to come in handy. I was less optimistic, but I understood that he couldn’t just close his practice. The moment Samuel stopped working would be the moment he had to perform an honest reckoning with our situation, and if he did that, he would come closer to the despair I felt every waking moment of every day.
“Do you have anything else? Or is it just the soap?” the woman asked me suddenly.
“That’s all.”
“Tomorrow. Come back this time tomorrow. I’ll keep something for you, but for that much soap?” She shook her head then pursed her lips. “It’s not going to be much. See if you can find something else to barter.”
“There is nothing else,” I said, my throat tight. But the woman’s gaze was at least sympathetic, and so I nodded at her. “I’ll do my best. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As I turned away, I wondered if it was worth calling into that store to ask about the eggs, even though I knew that the soap wasn’t nearly enough for a whole egg. It wasn’t enough for even half an egg here on the market, and the stores were always more expensive than the street vendors. Maybe they would give me a shell? We could grind it up and Mother could drink it in a little water. We’d done that once before for her. It wasn’t as good as real food, but it might help a little overnight. It surely couldn’t hurt.
As I spun back towards our apartment, a burst of adrenaline nearly knocked me sideways. Dawidek hadn’t moved, but two Jewish police officers were now standing in front of him. Like me, my brother was tall for his age—an inheritance from our maternal grandfather that made us look bizarre when we stood with Samuel and Mother, who were both more diminutive. Even so, he looked far too small to be crowded into the doorway of an apartment by two Jewish Police officers. That situation could turn to bloodshed in a heartbeat. The Kapo operated on a spectrum from well-meaning and kindly to murderously violent, and I had no way of knowing what kind of Kapo were currently accosting Dawidek. My heart thundered against the wall of my chest as I pushed my way back to them, knowing even as I approached that intervening could well get me shot.
For everything I had been through and for everything I had seen, the only thing that kept me going was my family, especially Dawidek. He was my favorite person in the world, a burst of purity in an environment of pure evil. Some days, the only time I felt still inside was when he and I were playing or talking in the evenings—and that stillness was the only rest I got. I could not live without him, in fact—I had already decided that if it came to that, I wouldn’t even try.
“Dawidek?” I called as I neared. Both Kapo turned toward me. The one on the left, the taller one, sized me up as if an emaciated, unarmed 16-year-old was any kind of threat. I knew from bitter experience that the smart thing to do would have been to let Dawidek try to talk his own way out of this. He was nine years old but used to defending himself in the bizarrely toxic environment of the Ghetto. All day long, he was at his job alone, and I was at mine. He needed his wits about him to survive even an hour of that, and I needed to trust that he could handle himself.
But I couldn’t convince myself to be smart, even when I knew that what I was about to do was likely to earn me, at best, a severe beating. I couldn’t even stop myself when the Kapo gave me a second chance to walk away. They ignored me and kept their attention on my brother. “Hey!” I shouted, loud enough that my voice echoed up and down the street, and dozens of people turned to stare. “He’s just a kid. He hasn’t done anything wrong!”
I was mentally planning my next move. I’d make a scene, maybe push one of the Kapo, and when they turned to beat me, Dawidek could run. Pain was never pleasant, but physical pain could also be an effective distraction from mental anguish, which was the worst kind. Maybe I could even land a punch, and that might feel good. But my brother stepped forward, held his hands up to me and said fiercely, “These are my supervisors, Roman. Just supervisors on the crew. We were just talking.”
My stomach dropped. My heartbeat pounded in my ears and my hands were hot.—I knew my face was flushed raspberry, both with embarrassment and from the adrenaline. After a terse pause that seemed to stretch forever, the Kapo exchanged an amused glance, one patted Dawidek on the back, and they continued down the street, both laughing at me. Dawidek shook his head in frustration.
“Why did you do that? What would you do, even if I was in trouble?”
“I’m sorry,” I admitted, scraping my hand through my hair. “I lost my head.”
“You’re always losing your head,” Dawidek muttered, falling into step beside me, as we began to follow the Kapo back towards our own apartment. “You need to listen to Father. Keep your head down, work hard and hope for the best. You are too smart to keep making such dumb decisions.”
Hearing my little brother echoing his father’s wisdom in the same tone and with the same impatience was always jarring, but in this case, I was dizzy with relief, and so I messed up his hair, and let out a weak laugh.
“For a nine-year-old, you are awfully wise.”
“Wise enough to know that you didn’t get any food for mother.”
“We were too late,” I said, and then I swallowed the lump in my throat. “But she said that we should come back tomorrow. She will set something aside for us.”
“Let’s walk the long way home. The trashcans on Smocza Street are sometimes good.”
We were far from the only family in the ghetto who had run out of resources. We were all starving and any morsel of food was quickly found, even if it was from a trashcan. Still, I was not at all keen to return to our crowded apartment, to face the disappointment in my stepfather’s gaze or to see the starvation in my mother’s. I let Dawidek lead the way, and we walked in silence, broken by his periodic bursts of commentary.
“We picked one up here… Another over there… Mordechai helped me with one there.”
As we turned down a quiet street, I realized that Dawidek’s Kapo supervisors were right in front of us, walking a few dozen feet ahead.
“We should turn around, I don’t want any trouble with those guys,” I muttered. Dawidek shook his head.
“They like me. I work hard and don’t give them any trouble. Now that you have stopped trying to get yourself killed, they won’t bother us, even if they do notice us.”
Just then, the shorter policeman glanced towards the sidewalk on his right, and then he paused. He waved his companion ahead, then withdrew something from his pocket as he crouched low to the ground. —I was far too far away to hear the words he spoke, but I saw the sadness in his gaze. The Kapo then rose and jogged ahead to catch up with his partner. Dawidek and I continued along the street, but only when we drew near where he had stopped did I realize why.
We had been in the ghetto for almost two years. Conditions were bad to begin with, and every new day seemed to bring new trials. I learned to wear blinders—to block out the public pain and suffering of my fellow prisoners. I had walked every block of the ghetto, both the Little Ghetto with its nicer apartments where the elite and artists appeared to live in relative comport, and through the Big Ghetto, where poor families like my own were crammed in, trying to survive at a much higher density. The footbridge on Chłodna Street connected the two and elevated the Ghetto residents above the “Aryan” Poles, and even the Germans, who passed beneath it. The irony of this never failed to amuse me when I crossed. Sometimes, I crossed it just to cheer myself up.
I knew the Ghetto inside and out, and I noticed every detail, even if I had taught myself to ignore what I saw as much as I could. I learned not to react when an elderly man or woman caught my hand as I passed, clawing in the hopes that I could spare them a morsel of food. I learned not to so much as startle if someone was shot in front of my eyes. And most of all, I learned to never look at the face of any unfortunate soul who was prone on the sidewalk. The only way to survive was to remain alert so I had to see it all, but I also had to learn to look right through it. The only way to manage my own broiling fury was to bury it.
But the policeman had drawn my attention to a scene of utter carnage outside of what used to be a clothing store. The store had long ago run out of stock and had been re-purposed as accommodation for several families. The wide front window was now taped over with Hessian sacks for privacy; outside of that window, on the paved sidewalk, a child was lying on her stomach. Alive, but barely.
The Ghetto was teeming with street children. The orphanages were full to bursting which meant that those who weren’t under the care of relatives or kindly strangers were left to their own devices. I saw abandoned children, but I didn’t see them.
I’d have passed right by this child on any other day. I couldn’t even manage to keep my own family safe and well, so it was better to keep walking and spare myself the pain of powerlessness. But I was curious about what the policeman had given the child, and so even as we approached her, I was scanning—looking to see what had caught his attention and to try to figure out what he’d put down on the ground.
Starvation confused the normal growth and development of children, but even so, I guessed she was two or three. She wore the same vacant expression I saw in most children by that stage. Patches of her hair had fallen out, and her naked stomach and legs were swollen. Someone had taken her clothing except for a tattered pair of underwear, and I understood why.
This child would not be alive by morning. Once they became too weak to beg for help, it didn’t take long, and this child was long past that point. Her dull brown eyes were liquid pools of defeat and agony.
My eyes drifted to her hands. One was lying open and empty on the sidewalk beside her, her palm facing upward, as if opening her hands to God. The other was also open, slumped against the sidewalk on the other side of her, but this palm was not empty. Bread. The policeman had pressed a chunk of bread beneath the child’s hand. I stared at the food and even though it was never going to find its way to my lips, my mouth began to water. I was torturing myself, but it was much easier to look at the bread than at the girl’s dull eyes.
Dawidek stood silently beside me. I thought of my mother, and then crouched beside the little girl.
“Hello,” I said, stiff and awkward. The child did not react. I cast my gaze all over her face, taking it in. The sharp cheekbones. The way her eyes seemed too big for her face. The matted hair. Someone had once brushed this little girl’s hair, and probably pulled it into pretty braids. Someone had once bathed this child, and tucked her into bed at night, bending down to whisper in her ear that she was loved and special and wanted.
Now, her lips were dry and cracked, and blood dried into a dirty black scab in the corner of her mouth. My eyes burned, and it took me a moment to realize that I was struggling to hold back tears.
“You should eat the bread,” I urged softly. Her eyes moved, and then she blinked, but then her eyelids fluttered and fell closed. She drew in a breath, but her whole chest rattled, the sound I knew people made just before they died—when they were far too ill to even cough. A tear rolled down my cheek. I closed my eyes, but now, instead of blackness, I saw the little girl’s face.
This was why I learned to wear blinders, because if you got too close to the suffering, it would burn itself into your soul. This little girl was now a part of me, and her pain was part of mine.
Even so, I knew that she could not eat the bread. The policeman’s gesture had been well-meaning, but it had come far too late. If I didn’t take the bread, the next person who passed would. If my time in the ghetto had taught me anything, it was that life might deliver blessings, but each one would have a sting in its tail. God might deliver us fortune, but never without a cost. I would take the bread, and the child would die overnight. But that wouldn’t be the end of the tragedy. In some ways, it was only the beginning.
I wiped my cheeks roughly with the back of my hand, and then before I could allow my conscience to stop me, I reached down and plucked the bread from under the child’s hand, to swiftly hide it my pocket. Then I stood, and forced myself to not look at her again. Dawidek and I began to walk.
“The little ones should be easier. I don’t have to ask the big kids for help lifting them, and they don’t weigh anything at all. They should be easier, shouldn’t they?” Dawidek said, almost philosophically. He sighed heavily, and then added in a voice thick with confusion and pain. “I’ll be able to lift her by myself tomorrow morning, but that won’t make it easier.”
Fortune gave me a job with one of the few factories in the ghetto that was owned by a kindly Jew, rather than some German businessman only wanting to take advantage of slave labor. But this meant that when the Kapo came looking for me at home, to help collect the bodies from the streets before sunrise each day, the only other viable person in our household was my brother.
When Dawidek was first recruited to this hideous role, I wanted to quit my job so that I could relieve him of it. But corpse-collection was unpaid work and my factory job paid me in food—every single day, I sat down to a hot lunch, which meant other members of my family could share my portion of rations. This girl would die overnight, and by dawn, my little brother would have lifted her into the back of a wagon. He and a team of children and teenagers, under the supervision of the Kapo, would drag the wagon to the cemetery, where they would tip the corpses into a pit with dozens of others.
Rage, black and red and violent in its intensity, clouded the edges of my vision and I felt the thunder of the injustice in my blood. But then Dawidek drew a deep breath, and he leaned forward to catch my gaze. He gave me a smile, a brave smile, one that tilted the axis of my world until I felt it chase the rage away.
I had to maintain control. I couldn’t allow my fury to destroy me, because my family was relying on me. Dawidek was relying on me.
“Mother is going to be so excited to have bread,” he said, his big brown eyes lighting up at the thought of pleasing her. “And that means Eleonora will get better milk tomorrow, won’t she?”
“Yes,” I said, my tone as empty as the words themselves. “This bread is a real blessing.”
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Thank you to Graydon House for giving me a chance to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Kara Sullivan is definitely not avoiding her deadline. After all, it’s the week of her best friend’s wedding and she’s the maid of honor, so she’s got lots of responsibilities. As a bestselling romance novelist with seven novels under her belt, she’s a pro and looming deadlines and writer’s block (which she definitely doesn’t have) don’t scare her. She’s just eager to support Cristina as she ties the knot with Jason.
But who should show up at Cristina and Jason’s rehearsal dinner but Kara’s college ex-boyfriend, (the gorgeous and infuriating) Ryan? Apparently, he’s one of Jason’s childhood friends, and he’s in the wedding party, too. Considering neither Kara nor Ryan were prepared to see each other again, it’s decidedly a meet-NOT-cute. There is nothing cute about this situation, and a bit of notice to mentally prepare would’ve been nice, Cristina! However, when Kara sits down to write again the next day, her writers’ block is suddenly gone. She has to wonder what’s changed. Are muses real…? And is Kara’s muse…Ryan?
Talk Bookish to Me is about a romance author, Kara, who is trying to finish up her next book and help her best friend with her wedding. On top of that, she runs into Ryan – her ex from college, and it seems like whatever happened in the past is still lingering between them. There is a whole emotional journey that takes place between these two from the moment they reunite to the end of the book.
The story really does start off light with a rom-com feel but the deeper we get into the story, we get into some bitter feelings of the past, regrets, resentment, guilt – so many feelings to work through. I wasn’t expecting where this story was headed but I had an inkling after a certain event.
The chemistry between them is electric as they remember how it used to be between them but I also liked that they could see how each other changed or stayed the same in some aspects. There is only really one particularly steamy scene in this story, but it was definitely a culmination of the tension between them.
I love Kara’s friends, but especially Maggie, she was there for her in every aspect of her life and I loved her for that.
How can you not love a book with a dog in it?
Triggers: grief, cheating
I’m not a fan of a having book within a book – so at times I mostly skimmed those parts.
This story has a great rom-com vibe and then the fun, games and sexy times end. Honestly, if it were me, I don’t think I could forgive Ryan as Kara did but they have the history together. Just for me personally, Ryan messed up bad. I will say the moment they fight about it was pretty intense and it was needed, they needed the truth out on both sides but wow…it was a emotionally heavy scene.
I enjoyed this enemies to lovers, second chance romance love story even though I don’t think I could have forgiven Ryan as Kara did. That was the only part of the story that brought my mood a bit down. I did understand though with young love, so much can go wrong as both people in the relationship grow and change. It gives us a chance to see if grown Kara and Ryan feel like what they feel for each other is what they want to fight for. Definitely check this one out if you like second chance romance stories.
📚 ~ Yolanda
*****
About the Author:
KATE BROMLEY lives in New York City with her husband, son, and her somewhat excessive collection of romance novels (It’s not hoarding if it’s books, right?). She was a preschool teacher for seven years and is now focusing full-time on combining her two great passions – writing swoon-worthy love stories and making people laugh. Talk Bookish to Me is her first novel.
I turn my gaze from the floor to the well-dressed man standing beside me. There are only two of us in the elevator, so he must be talking to me.
“I think it’s a matter of personal preference,” I answer. “I’m the maid of honor so I had to be excessive.”
His eyebrows bob up as I adjust my grip on the Great-Dane-sized gift basket I’m carrying. The cellophane wrapping paper crinkles each time I move, echoing through the confined space just loudly enough to keep things weird. Because if everyone isn’t uncomfortable for the entire ride, are you even really in an elevator?
I’m low-key ecstatic when the doors glide open ten seconds later. With my basket now on the cusp of breaking both my arms and my spirit, I beeline it out of there and stride into the rooftop lounge where my best friend is hosting her pre-wedding party, drinking in the scent of heat and champagne as I maneuver through the sea of guests.
Like most maids-of-honor, I flung myself down the Etsy rabbit hole headfirst and ordered an obscene amount of decorations for tonight’s event. Burlap “Mr. & Mrs.” banners dangle from floating shelves behind the bar as twinkle lights weave around the balcony railings like ivy. Lace-trimmed mason jars filled with pink roses sit on every candlelit cocktail table. Cristina and I worked with the tenacity of two matrimonial Spartans to get everything ready this morning, and it’s clear that our blood, sweat and tears were very much worth it.
It’s then that I spot Cristina mingling near the end of the bar. Beautiful, petite and come-hither curvy, I’d hate her if she weren’t one of my favorite people ever. Her caramel hair spills down her back and her white high-low dress sets her apart from the crowd in just the right way—she’s a princess in the forest and we’re her adoring woodland animals. I’m her feisty chipmunk sidekick to my core.
I place my gift on a nearby receiving table and give a little wave when I catch her eye. She’s waiting for me with a huge grin when I arrive at her side.
“Hey, lady!” she says, pulling me in for a hug. “Look at you, rolling in here looking all gorgeous.”
We step apart and I stand up a bit taller. “Why, thank you. I feel pretty good.”
It’s also very possible that Cristina is just so used to me dazzling the world with yoga pants and sweaters every day that my transformation seems more dramatic than it is.
“Were you able to get any writing done this afternoon?” she asks, handing me a glass of champagne from off the mahogany bar top.
I get a twisting knot in my gut at the mention of my writing, or lack thereof. Having been dying a slow literary death for almost a year, I’m never without some stomach-turning sensation for long. The final deadline for my next romancenovel is officially a month away and if I don’t deliver a bestseller by then—
“Okay, you’re making your freak-out face,” Cristina interjects. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
I inhale a shallow breath and force a smile. “It’s fine. I’m good.”
“Let’s switch gears—are you sure it’s not weird that I’m having a pre-wedding party? Was booking the salsa band too much since I’m having one at the wedding, too?”
Beyond grateful for the booming trumpet and bongos that are drowning out my own thoughts, I turn to the corner and find the ten-piece group playing with addictive abandon. Cristina’s relatives, who are essentially non-trained professional salsa dancers, dominate the dance floor, and rightfully so. Cristina’s brother, Edgar, once tried to teach me the basics but I’m fairly confident I looked like a plank of wood that was given the gift of limbs. Cristina recommended dance lessons. Edgar suggested a bottle of aguardiente and prayer.
“The band is amazing,” I say as I swing back around, “and of course people have pre-wedding parties.” I’ve actually never heard of a pre-wedding party. An engagement party, yes. A bachelorette party, absolutely. But what’s going down tonight is basically a casual reception days before the mega-reception.
“Jason and I just have so many people coming in from out of town, plus we wanted the bridal party to get acquainted. We figured a little get-together would be fun.”
“I’m all for it. Who doesn’t want to pre-game for a wedding a week in advance?”
“I know I do,” Cristina says, lifting her own champagne and taking a sip. “Everyone is here except Jason and some groomsmen. Can you believe that creep is late to his own party?”
“Should you really be calling your fiancé a creep?”
“He’s my creep so it’s okay.”
“Valid point.”
“Picture please! Will you girls get together?”
I look to my right and find a teenage boy with wildly curly hair pointing a camera at us. He’s dressed in all black and looks so eager to take our photo that I can’t help but to find him endearing.
“Absolutely! Big smile, Kara.” Cristina throws her arm around my waist and after we withstand an intense flash, the young man is gone before my eyes can readjust. “That was Jason’s cousin, Rob. He wants to be a photographer, so I hired him for the night.”
“That was thoughtful of you,” I say, still recovering from my momentary blindness. “By the way, where is Jason?”
“He’s still at home. Two of his groomsmen are driving up and he wanted to wait for them since, apparently, grown men can’t find their way to a party by themselves.”
“Driving in Manhattan is intimidating. He probably didn’t want them to get lost.”
“Right, because neither of them has GPS? Jason should be here.”
I’m honestly shocked that Jason isn’t here. I love Cristina and Jason both to death but they’re one of those couples that rarely go out socially without each other. Even when I invite Cristina over to my apartment for a wine night, she asks to bring Jason. I’ve always thought it was a bit much, but I guess it works for them.
“Okay, forget everyone else, let’s toast.” I clear my throat and hold up my champagne. “When we were both waitressing at McMahon’s Pub in grad school, I had no idea it would lead to nine amazing years of friendship. Now I’d be lost without you. Here’s to you having a magical night. I’m so glad I’m here to celebrate with you.”
We smile and tap our glasses together, the ding of the crystal echoing my words.
I take a sip and the bubbly drink slips easily down my throat. Still savoring the sweetness, I ask, “So, who are these mystery groomsmen Jason’s waiting for?”
“One is named Beau and I can’t remember the other one. They’re two guys he grew up with when his family lived in North Carolina.”
“North Carolina? I thought Jason was from Texas?”
“He spent most of his life in Texas, but he lived in North Carolina until he was ten. He somehow kept in contact with these two through the years.”
“That’s nice, him staying friends with them for so long.”
“Yeah, it’s adorable, but they still should have gotten their asses here on their own.” Cristina is poised to elaborate when her gaze locks on something across the room. She tries and fails to look annoyed instead of excited.
“I’m guessing the groom has arrived,” I say, glancing over my shoulder. My suspicions are confirmed as I see Jason making his way toward us, smiling at Cristina like a fifth grader saying “cheese” on picture day. He’s tilting his head and everything.
“There she is! There’s my incredibly forgiving future wife.” Jason leans down and kisses Cristina before she can verbally obliterate him. He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek next and then shifts back to his fiancée’s side, sneaking an arm around her waist and pulling her to his hip.
“So, I’m going to go ahead and disregard all the semi-violent text messages you’ve sent me over the past hour. Bearing that in mind, how’s everything going?”
Cristina looks up at him, feigning disinterest. “It’s going great. Since you weren’t here, I talked to several nice men. Turns out, pre-wedding parties are a great place to meet guys.”
“I’m so happy for you.”
“I appreciate that. Four contenders, specifically, really piqued my interest.”
“Are they taller than me?” Jason asks. “Do they make a lot of money?”
“Obviously. They’re way taller and all of them are independently wealthy.”
“Nice. Kara, did you meet these freakishly tall and rich men?”
“I did and spoiler alert, I’m engaged now, too! Double wedding here we come!”
Jason smiles and pulls Cristina in even closer, his gaze holding hers. “I guess this is where being late gets you. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. Do you forgive me?”
“Don’t I always?”
He leans down and gives her another picture-perfect kiss.
It’s official. I’m dying alone. Just putting that out there.
“Now, where are these friends of yours? Oh! Let’s set one of them up with Kara!” Cristina looks at me with a dangerous matchmaker gleam in her eyes.
“Actually, I already mentioned Kara, and one of my buddies said he went to college with her.”
Went to college with me?
Jason looks towards the entrance and waves. “Hey, Ryan! Come over here!”
And then I go catatonic. I can’t move. I stand stock still, looking at Cristina like she sprouted a third arm out of her forehead and it’s giving me the middle finger.
Someone walks past me and a soft breeze ghosts across my overheating skin. I stare in a state of utter disbelief as Ryan Thompson steps into view beside Jason.
“It’s been a while, Sullivan,” he says, his voice as steady and tempting as ever.
My champagne glass falls from my fingers and shatters against the floor.
“Kara?” Cristina’s voice rings with concern as she nudges us away from the broken glass that’s now littered around our feet. She grasps my elbow, but I don’t feel it. She could backhand me across the face with a polo mallet and I wouldn’t feel it. My mind is spiraling, plummeting inwards as I come to grips with the realization that Ryan is standing two feet away from me.
Dressed in a navy suit, a crisp white button-down and brown dress shoes, he’s come a long way from the sweatshirts and jeans that were his unofficial uniform in college. His dirty-blond hair is on the shorter side, but a few wayward strands still fall across his forehead. Ten years ago, I would have reached up and brushed them aside without a thought. Now, my hand curls into a tight, unforgiving fist at my side.
If we were another former couple, seeing each other for the first time in a decade might be a dreamy, serendipitous meet-cute—a Nancy Meyers movie in pre-production. We’d have a few drinks and spend hours reminiscing about old times before picking up right where we left off. It would be comfortable and familiar as anything, like a sip of hot chocolate at Christmas with Nat King Cole crooning on vinyl in the background.
But we are not that kind of former couple, and I’m convinced that if Nat King Cole were here and knew my side of the story, he would grab Ryan by the scruff of his shirt and hold him steady as I roundhouse-kicked him in the throat.
It’s a tough pill to swallow but Ryan looks good. Like, really good. His face is harder than it was when he was twenty-one and the stubble on his chin tells me he hasn’t shaved in a few days, making him seem like he just rolled out of bed. And not rolled out of bed in a dirty way, but in a “I just rolled out of bed and yet I still look ruggedly handsome and you fully want to make out with me” kind of way.
The bastard.
“Ryan,” Cristina says, always the first to jump in, “Jason mentioned that you and Kara went to college together.”
“We did.” His eyes don’t move from mine for even a second. “It’s got to be what, ten years now?”
“Yeah, it’s been a long, long time,” I say quickly, turning to face Cristina. “I think I may have mentioned him before. Remember my friend from North Carolina?”
If someone were to look up “my friend from North Carolina” in the Dictionary of Kara, they would find the following:
My friend from North Carolina (noun): 1. Ryan Thompson. 2. My college boyfriend. 3. My first real boyfriend ever. 4. My first love. 5. Taker of my virginity. 6. Guy who massacred my heart with a rusty sledgehammer and fed the remains to rabid, ravenous dogs.
Cristina is well versed in the dictionary of Kara and recognition washes over her. “No way,” she says, her voice dropping.
“Yes way,” I answer happily, overcompensating.
Now’s it’s Cristina’s turn to panic. “Wow. Okay, wow, what a small world, huh?” She grabs Jason’s hand in an iron grip, making him wince as she blasts an over-the-top smile. “Well, we should give you guys a chance to catch up. My abuelita just got here so Jason and I are going to say hello.”
“Your abuelita died two years ago,” I hiss.
“I know, it’s a miracle. See you two later!” She drags her soon-to-be husband away before he can get a word out.
I watch them go, sailing away like the last lifeboat as I stand on deck with the string quartet, the cheerful Bach melody only further confirming that this ship is going down.
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
In The Promised Queen, the thrilling finale to Jeffe Kennedy’s Forgotten Empires trilogy, the fate of the world hangs in the balance as Con, Lia, and their allies sacrifice everything in a final bid to destroy the corrupt empire.
Claim the hand that wears the ring, and the empire falls.
Conrí, former Crown Prince of Oriel, claimed the hand that wears the Abiding Ring, but the prophecy remains unfulfilled. Queen Euthalia of Calanthe returned to her island kingdom, but broken in mind and body. With the blood of war unleashing ancient terrors, Calanthe isn’t the haven it once was.
Lia must use her magical bond with Calanthe to save their people while Con fights to hold off the vengeful Emperor Anure and his wizards. Con and Lia will have to trust in each other—and in love—to fend off ultimate disaster.
This is the perfect conclusion to a unique, romance fantasy series. I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t even think I’d remember what happened in book two but wow, it took off right away and it transported me back to Lia’s world and the cliffhanger of book two.
Lia’s transformation from dead to her every potential is inspiring and beautiful. She becomes what she is meant to be and embraces all her orchid uniqueness! Lia is Calanthe. We also learn more of how she was born/created which is so cool.
Conri, I love him. He really is a wolf, so rough around the edges compared to Lia’s control and regal manner. I love how they are complete opposites but they compliment each other so well. Conri is a wing-it kind of lone wolf and Lia reminds him help sometimes is okay.
I love the world building but Conri and Lia’s love story is just the best to me. They will be added to my favorite book couples for sure! I love their insecurities but how they both work things out, most Conri who is so persistent and will fight for her for always. Their wedding vows at the end made my heart melt. I love them. Also, there is a very sexy, hot scene in the night court, it’s erotic but tastefully done!
The supporting cast is great as well and we get a very happy ending.
Triggers: memories of torture
I felt like the fight with Anure was just a tiny bit anti-climatic? I was expecting more when they confronted him, but Conri and Lia did debate about how much of exacting vengeance was enough (okay so I wanted Conri to hammer him haha). But that’s okay, Lia was right and I think it was a very just ending for Anure though.
We get to find out more about Ambrose’s role in this prophetic destiny about Lia.
This series got better with every book that came out, culminating to this wonderful conclusion in The Promised Queen. I was swept away in this lush world of Calanthe where Lia rules with a fair hand. I fell in love with Lia and Conri who fight for each other and the lands that Anure stole from other royals. I was inspired by Lia’s transformation to accept all the different parts of her and be the person she was destined to be. If you like an enemies to lover’s romance story set in a lush fantasy world with a Queen who is a bit more than human, this one may be to your liking.
Categories: Contemporary Romance, Women’s Fiction, Single Mom
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Single mom Jess Davis is a data and statistics wizard, but no amount of number crunching can convince her to step back into the dating world. Raised by her grandparents–who now help raise her seven-year-old daughter, Juno–Jess has been left behind too often to feel comfortable letting anyone in. After all, her father’s never been around, her hard-partying mother disappeared when she was six, and her ex decided he wasn’t “father material” before Juno was even born. Jess holds her loved ones close, but working constantly to stay afloat is hard…and lonely.
But then Jess hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new DNA-based matchmaking company that’s predicted to change dating forever. Finding a soulmate through DNA? The reliability of numbers: This Jess understands. At least she thought she did, until her test shows an unheard-of 98% compatibility with another subject in the database: GeneticAlly’s founder, Dr. River Pena. This is one number she can’t wrap her head around, because she already knows Dr. Pena. The stuck-up, stubborn man is without a doubt not her soulmate. But GeneticAlly has a proposition: Get to know him and we’ll pay you. Jess–who is barely making ends meet–is in no position to turn it down, despite her skepticism about the project and her dislike for River. As the pair are dragged from one event to the next as the “Diamond” pairing that could make GeneticAlly a mint in stock prices, Jess begins to realize that there might be more to the scientist–and the science behind a soulmate–than she thought.
Funny, warm, and full of heart, The Soulmate Equation proves that the delicate balance between fate and choice can never be calculated.
Jess is a single parent of a 7 year old girl, Juno. I totally related to Jess as a mom being frazzled and just trying to get through the day. I’m not a single mom, but there are times when I feel like one haha, so I admired how Jess did what she had to do to keep them afloat with the help of her grandparents and best friend.
Jess’s best friend Fizzy is the BEST ever. 😍 I love how she’s a romance author. Fizzy is funny, adventurous, says what she wants to say, does what she wants to do and she and Jess have the best relationship. The two of them together made me laugh so much! Their dialogue was perfect.
The importance of family comes through in this one, not only because Jess is a mom, but her own mother gave her up, and was out of her life for a very long time. Jess was raised by her grandparents and they are the sweetest. I love their little family.
What is it about the geeky guy turning handsome/hot/successful that I love? Revenge of the nerds much? I love how River is this gorgeous guy, very much into his work…but he used to be the unpopular geeky kid in high school. Awww!
The romance is so good! The chemistry is palpable. I love how they meet, how they get together, how they grow as a couple and try to figure out their feelings. This story made me feel good and happy. 😍
I found the matchmaking app using DNA very interesting. Some of the science and statistics went over my head but it was still very fascinating.
Jess’s mom is a recovering addict or she’s supposed to be. She shows up in Jess’s life to ask for money and I feel for Jess but like River says, she definitely takes charge when she has to and is decisive.
I thoroughly and happily love The Soulmate Equation. I was invested with Jess and River’s love story and their chemistry is off the charts. I love how they could talk science and statistics and understand one another even when I didn’t understand them. I laughed a lot because Jess’s best friend is fantastic and for me that was the other love story in this book, the love in friendship. This is that kind of book where I wanted to find out what happens after the ending because I fell in love with this little family. This story is heartfelt, fun, smart, and I wish it never had to end.
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris comes a riveting tale of courage and unlikely friendship during World War II.
1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents in the Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous tunnels beneath the city. One day Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about her own age buying flowers.
Ella Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease with her stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. While on an errand in the market, she catches a glimpse of something moving beneath a grate in the street. Upon closer inspection, she realizes it’s a girl hiding.
Ella begins to aid Sadie and the two become close, but as the dangers of the war worsen, their lives are set on a collision course that will test them in the face of overwhelming odds. Inspired by incredible true stories, The Woman with the Blue Star is an unforgettable testament to the power of friendship and the extraordinary strength of the human will to survive.
I thought the focus on Sadie Gault who hid in the sewers while German Nazis occupied Poland was a fascinating story. I find most WWII to be the same at times, mostly with them concentrating on the war front. I found this different and I learned something new. The harrowing events that take place from their escape to the sewer and life there is tightly woven. This was a quick read from the start.
The dual perspectives of Sadie and Ella, a Polish girl living relatively free in Krakow shows how much the Jewish people were subjected to many evils under the Nazis. Ella is trying to survive in her own way since food rations are low, she’s living with her stepmother, and her love life is in shambles. Her relationship problems are light compared to Sadie who is living in a sewer and hoping one day she will have a future. But their unlikely friendship grows steadily through a sewer grate for the most part, and they become a lifeline for one another.
Sadie’s life in the sewers is horrible and yet compared to being in a death camp, this was the safest and best place for them to be. They live in filth, barely have food and her mother is pregnant! Life and death is happening in Sadie’s life in the sewers and my heart ached for her situation many times over.
I was afraid for Sadie and Ella being caught by Nazis or Polish Police officers. Every time they had a chance to interact I prayed they would not be caught because I can only imagine worse horrors for Sadie and Ella if they were.
Really great twist in the end but I thought I had misread something and had to pause for a moment to realize what the author was doing.
Triggers: Death, claustrophobia
Abrupt ending but it is explained in the epilogue, for a moment I was confused.
I really enjoyed this historical fiction story about two girls, one Jewish and one Polish, who befriend each other in the most unexpected circumstances. I loved the focus on their friendship and their survival journey in Nazis occupied Poland. Sadie has lost her freedom and her family yet living in the sewers is the best thing to do. Ella has lost family too, her love, and yet she still has more freedom to go about life because she is Polish. I was engaged in this story. I learned something and I felt for Sadie. In the end I was grateful for the random strangers that helped her survive a horrible period in time and her strength to hold on to hope to live and keep going.
📚~ Yolanda
About the Author:
Pam Jenoff is the author of several books of historical fiction, including the NYT bestseller The Orphan’s Tale. She holds a degree in international affairs from George Washington University and a degree in history from Cambridge, and she received her JD from UPenn. Her novels are inspired by her experiences working at the Pentagon and as a diplomat for the State Department handling Holocaust issues in Poland. She lives with her husband and 3 children near Philadelphia, where she teaches law.
Everything changed the day they came for the children.
I was supposed to have been in the attic crawl space of the three-story building we shared with a dozen other families in the ghetto. Mama helped me hide there each morning before she set out to join the factory work detail, leaving me with a fresh bucket as a toilet and a stern admonishment not to leave. But I grew cold and restless alone in the tiny, frigid space where I couldn’t run or move or even stand straight. The minutes stretched silently, broken only by a scratching—unseen children, years younger than me, stowed on the other side of the wall. They were kept separate from one another without space to run and play. They sent each other messages by tapping and scratching, though, like a kind of improvised Morse code. Sometimes, in my boredom, I joined in, too.
“Freedom is where you find it,” my father often said when I complained. Papa had a way of seeing the world exactly as he wanted. “The greatest prison is in our mind.” It was easy for him to say. Though he manual ghetto labor was a far cry from his professional work as an accountant before the war, at least he was out and about each day, seeing other people. Not cooped up like me. I had scarcely left our apartment building since we were forced to move six months earlier from our apartment in the Jewish Quarter near the city center to the Podgórze neighborhood where the ghetto had been established on the southern bank of the river. I wanted a normal life, my life, free to run beyond the walls of the ghetto to all of the places I had once known and taken for granted. I imagined taking the tram to the shops on the Rynek or to the kino to see a film, exploring the ancient grassy mounds on the outskirts of the city. I wished that at least my best friend, Stefania, was one of the others hidden nearby. Instead, she lived in a separate apartment on the other side of the ghetto designated for the families of the Jewish police.
It wasn’t boredom or loneliness that had driven me from my hiding place this time, though, but hunger. I had always had a big appetite and this morning’s breakfast ration had been a half slice of bread, even less than usual. Mama had offered me her portion, but I knew she needed her strength for the long day ahead on the labor detail.
As the morning wore on in my hiding place, my empty belly had begun to ache. Visions pushed into my mind uninvited of the foods we ate before the war: rich mushroom soup and savory borscht, and pierogi, the plump, rich dumplings my grandmother used to make. By midmorning, I felt so weak from hunger that I had ventured out of my hiding place and down to the shared kitchen on the ground floor, which was really nothing more than a lone working stove burner and a sink that dripped tepid brown water. I didn’t go to take food—even if there had been any, I would never steal. Rather, I wanted to see if there were any crumbs left in the cupboard and to fill my stomach with a glass of water.
I stayed in the kitchen longer than I should, reading the dog-eared copy of the book I’d brought with me. The thing I detested most about my hiding place in the attic was the fact that it was too dark for reading. I had always loved to read and Papa had carried as many books as he could from our apartment to the ghetto, over the protests of my mother, who said we needed the space in our bags for clothes and food. It was my father who had nurtured my love of learning and encouraged my dream of studying medicine at Jagiellonian University before the German laws made that impossible, first by banning Jews and later by closing the university altogether. Even in the ghetto at the end of his long, hard days of labor, Papa loved to teach and discuss ideas with me. He had somehow found me a new book a few days earlier, too, The Count of Monte Cristo. But the hiding place in the attic was too dark for me to read and there was scarcely any time in the evening before curfew and lights-out. Just a bit longer, I told myself, turning the page in the kitchen. A few minutes wouldn’t matter at all.
I had just finished licking the dirty bread knife when I heard heavy tires screeching, followed by barking voices. I froze, nearly dropping my book. The SS and Gestapo were outside, flanked by the vile Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst, Jewish Ghetto Police, who did their bidding. It was an aktion, the sudden unannounced arrest of large groups of Jews to be taken from the ghetto to camps. The very reason I was meant to be hiding in the first place. I raced from the kitchen, across the hall and up the stairs. From below came a great crash as the front door to the apartment building splintered and the police burst through. There was no way I could make it back to the attic in time.
Instead, I raced to our third-floor apartment. My heart pounded as I looked around desperately, wishing for an armoire or other cabinet suitable for hiding in the tiny room, which was nearly bare except for a dresser and bed. There were other places, I knew, like the fake plaster wall one of the other families had constructed in the adjacent building not a week earlier. That was too far away now, impossible to reach. My eyes focused on the large steamer trunk stowed at the foot of my parents’ bed. Mama had shown me how to hide there once shortly after we first moved to the ghetto. We practiced it like a game, Mama opening the trunk so that I could climb in before she closed the lid.
The trunk was a terrible hiding place, exposed and in the middle of the room. But there was simply nowhere else. I had to try. I raced over to the bed and climbed into the trunk, then closed the lid with effort. I thanked heavens that I was tiny like Mama. I had always hated being so petite, which made me look a solid two years younger than I actually was. Now it seemed a blessing, as did the sad fact that the months of meager ghetto rations had made me thinner. I still fit in the trunk.
When we had rehearsed, we had envisioned Mama putting a blanket or some clothes over the top of the trunk. Of course, I couldn’t do that myself. So the trunk sat unmasked for anyone who walked into the room to see and open. I curled into a tiny ball and wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the white armband with the blue star on my sleeve that all Jews were required to wear.
There came a great crashing from the next building, the sound of plaster being hewn by a hammer or ax. The police had found the hiding place behind the wall, given away by the too-fresh paint. An unfamiliar cry rang out as a child was found and dragged from his hiding place. If I had gone there, I would have been caught as well.
Someone neared the door to the apartment and flung it open. My heart seized. I could hear breathing, feel eyes searching the room. I’m sorry, Mama, I thought, feeling her reproach for having left the attic. I braced myself for discovery. Would they go easier on me if I came out and gave myself up? The footsteps grew fainter as the German continued down the hall, stopping before each door, searching.
The war had come to Kraków one warm fall day two and a half years earlier when the air-raid sirens rang out for the first time and sent the playing children scurrying from the street. Life got hard before it got bad. Food disappeared and we waited in long lines for the most basic supplies. Once there was no bread for a whole week.
Then about a year ago, upon orders from the General Government, Jews teemed into Kraków by the thousands from the small towns and villages, dazed and carrying their belongings on their backs. At first I wondered how they would all find places to stay in Kazimierz, the already cramped Jewish Quarter of the city. But the new arrivals were forced to live by decree in a crowded section of the industrial Podgórze district on the far side of the river that had been cordoned off with a high wall. Mama worked with the Gmina, the local Jewish community organization, to help them resettle, and we often had friends of friends over for a meal when they first arrived, before they went to the ghetto for good. They told stories from their hometowns too awful to believe and Mama shooed me from the room so I would not hear.
Several months after the ghetto was created, we were ordered to move there as well. When Papa told me, I couldn’t believe it. We were not refugees, but residents of Kraków; we had lived in our apartment on Meiselsa Street my entire life. It was the perfect location: on the edge of the Jewish Quarter but easy walking distance to the sights and sounds of the city center and close enough to Papa’s office on Stradomska Street that he could come home for lunch. Our apartment was above an adjacent café where a pianist played every evening. Sometimes the music spilled over and Papa would whirl Mama around the kitchen to the faint strains. But according to the orders, Jews were Jews. One day. One suitcase each. And the world I had known my entire life disappeared forever.
I peered out of the thin slit opening of the trunk, trying to see across the tiny room I shared with my parents. We were lucky, I knew, to have a whole room to ourselves, a privilege we had been given because my father was a labor foreman. Others were forced to share an apartment, often two or three families together. Still, the space felt cramped compared to our real home. We were ever on top of one another, the sights and sounds and smells of daily living magnified.
“Kinder, raus!” the police called over and over again now as they patrolled the halls. Children, out. It was not the first time the Germans had come for children during the day, knowing that their parents would be at work.
But I was no longer a child. I was eighteen and might have joined the work details like others my age and some several years younger. I could see them lining up for roll call each morning before trudging to one of the factories. And I wanted to work, even though I could tell from the slow, painful way my father now walked, stooped like an old man, and how Mama’s hands were split and bleeding that it was hard and awful. Work meant a chance to get out and see and talk to people. My hiding was a subject of much debate between my parents. Papa thought I should work. Labor cards were highly prized in the ghetto. Workers were valued and less likely to be deported to one of the camps. But Mama, who seldom fought my father on anything, had forbidden it. “She doesn’t look her age. The work is too hard. She is safest out of sight.” I wondered as I hid now, about to be discovered at any second, if she would still think she was right.
The building finally went silent, the last of the awful footsteps receding. Still I didn’t move. That was one of the ways they trapped people who were hiding, by pretending to go away and lying in wait when they came out. I remained motionless, not daring to leave my hiding place. My limbs ached, then went numb. I had no idea how much time had passed. Through the slit, I could see that the room had grown dimmer, as if the sun had lowered a bit.
Sometime later, there were footsteps again, this time a shuffling sound as the laborers trudged back silent and exhausted from their day. I tried to uncurl myself from the trunk. But my muscles were stiff and sore and my movements slow. Before I could get out, the door to our apartment flung open and someone ran into the room with steps light and fluttering. “Sadie!” It was Mama, sounding hysterical.
“Jestem tutaj,” I called. I am here. Now that she was home, she could help me untangle myself and get out. But my voice was muffled by the trunk. When I tried to undo the latch, it stuck.
Mama raced from the room back into the corridor. I could hear her open the door to the attic, then run up the stairs, still searching for me. “Sadie!” she called. Then, “My child, my child,” over and over again as she searched but did not find me, her voice rising to a shriek. She thought I was gone.
“Mama!” I yelled. She was too far away to hear me, though, and her own cries were too loud. Desperately, I struggled once more to free myself from the trunk without success. Mama raced back into the room, still wailing. I heard the scraping sound of a window opening and felt a whoosh of cold air. At last I threw myself against the lid of the trunk, slamming my shoulder so hard it throbbed. The latch sprang open.
I broke free and stood up quickly. “Mama?” She was standing in the oddest position, with one foot on the window ledge, her willowy frame silhouetted against the frigid twilight sky. “What are you doing?” For a second, I thought she was looking for me outside. But her face was twisted with grief and pain. I knew then why Mama was on the window ledge. She assumed I had been taken along with the other children. And she didn’t want to live. If I hadn’t freed myself from the trunk in time, Mama would have jumped. I was her only child, her whole world. She was prepared to kill herself before she would go on without me.
A chill ran through me as I sprinted toward her. “I’m here, I’m here.” She wobbled unsteadily on the window ledge and I grabbed her arm to stop her from falling. Remorse ripped through me. I always wanted to please her, to bring that hard-won smile to her beautiful face. Now I had caused her so much pain she’d almost done the unthinkable.
“I was so worried,” she said after I’d helped her down and closed the window. As if that explained everything. “You weren’t in the attic.”
“But, Mama, I hid where you told me to.” I gestured to the trunk. “The other place, remember? Why didn’t you look for me there?”
Mama looked puzzled. “I didn’t think you would fit anymore.” There was a pause and then we both began laughing, the sound scratchy and out of place in the pitiful room. For a few seconds, it was like we were back in our old apartment on Meiselsa Street and none of this had happened at all. If we could still laugh, surely things would be all right. I clung to this last improbable thought like a life preserver at sea.
But a cry echoed through the building, then another, silencing our laughter. It was the mothers of the other children who had been taken by the police. There came a thud outside. I started for the window, but my mother blocked me. “Look away,” she ordered. It was too late. I glimpsed Helga Kolberg, who lived down the hall, lying motionless in the coal-tinged snow on the pavement below, her limbs cast at odd angles and skirt splayed around her like a fan. She had realized her children were gone and, like Mama, she didn’t want to live without them. I wondered whether jumping was a shared instinct, or if they had discussed it, a kind of suicide pact in case their worst nightmares came true.
My father raced into the room then. Neither Mama nor I said a word, but I could tell from his unusually grim expression that he already knew about the aktion and what had happened to the other families. He simply walked over and wrapped his enormous arms around both of us, hugging us tighter than usual.
As we sat, silent and still, I looked up at my parents. Mama was a striking beauty—thin and graceful, with white-blond hair the color of a Nordic princess’. She looked nothing like the other Jewish women and I had heard whispers more than once that she didn’t come from here. She might have walked away from the ghetto and lived as a non-Jew if it wasn’t for us. But I was built like Papa, with the dark, curly hair and olive skin that made the fact that we were Jews undeniable. My father looked like the laborer the Germans had made him in the ghetto, broad-shouldered and ready to lift great pipes or slabs of concrete. In fact, he was an accountant—or had been until it became illegal for his firm to employ him anymore. I always wanted to please Mama, but it was Papa who was my ally, keeper of secrets and weaver of dreams, who stayed up too late whispering secrets in the dark and had roamed the city with me, hunting for treasure. I moved closer now, trying to lose myself in the safety of his embrace.
Still, Papa’s arms could offer little shelter from the fact that everything was changing. The ghetto, despite its awful conditions, had once seemed relatively safe. We were living among Jews and the Germans had even appointed a Jewish council, the Judenrat, to run our daily affairs. Perhaps if we laid low and did as we were told, Papa said more than once, the Germans would leave us alone inside these walls until the war was over. That had been the hope. But after today, I wasn’t so sure. I looked around the apartment, seized with equal parts disgust and fear. In the beginning, I had not wanted to be here; now I was terrified we would be forced to leave.
“We have to do something,” Mama burst out, her voice a pitch higher than usual as it echoed my unspoken thoughts.
“I’ll take her tomorrow and register her for a work permit,” Papa said. This time Mama did not argue. Before the war, being a child had been a good thing. But now being useful and able to work was the only thing that might save us.
Mama was talking about more than a work visa, though. “They are going to come again and next time we won’t be so lucky.” She did not bother to hold back her words for my benefit now. I nodded in silent agreement. Things were changing, a voice inside me said. We could not stay here forever.
“It will be okay, kochana,” Papa soothed. How could he possibly say that? But Mama laid her head on his shoulder, seeming to trust him as she always had. I wanted to believe it, too. “I will think of something. At least,” Papa added as we huddled close, “we are all still together.” The words echoed through the room, equal parts promise and prayer.
Excerpted from The Woman With the Blue Star @ 2021 by Pam Jenoff, used with permission by Park Row Books.
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a sweeping romance with a dash of magic.
They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail’s most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina’s chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun, and already Nina’s debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis—neighbors call her the Witch of Oldhouse—and the haphazard manifestations of her powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.
When entertainer Hector Auvray arrives to town, Nina is dazzled. A telekinetic like her, he has traveled the world performing his talents for admiring audiences. He sees Nina not as a witch, but ripe with potential to master her power under his tutelage. With Hector’s help, Nina’s talent blossoms, as does her love for him.
But great romances are for fairytales, and Hector is hiding a truth from Nina — and himself—that threatens to end their courtship before it truly begins. The Beautiful Ones is a charming tale of love and betrayal, and the struggle between conformity and passion, set in a world where scandal is a razor-sharp weapon.
This is the first novel I’ve read from this author, though I have Mexican Gothic on my TBR list and I fell in love with this story as it just pulled me in and didn’t let go. I don’t know what I really expected from it, but I found the writing so engaging, and beautiful.
I became a reader through romance novels so this was everything I want in a romance. I really was swept away and could not put the book down. There is passion, jealousy, betrayal, romance and love. I felt like my heart was being squeezed by the end of the story but in a good way.
I liked how this was an alternate historical fiction story, even though the places resembled high society in England some time in the early 1900’s perhaps, whatever time period where motorcars were being introduced. The characters attended balls, a season of parties, socializing and summer in the countryside. A fun twist is that Nina and Hector both could do telekinesis. In this world of The Beautiful Ones, it’s an extraordinary skill but looked down upon in high society. It makes Nina stand out in unpleasant ways, whereas Hector thrives with the skill being a performer. The two feel less alone when together.
Nina isn’t beautiful like her cousin’s wife Valerie, but she comes from a well known family. Unfortunately she’s too different, she talks when she’s not supposed to and it’s usually about inappropriate things like bugs, plus she can do telekinesis. She’s never made friends easily because she is different but I like how it didn’t stop her from being who she is and enjoying life. And thank goodness for her supportive family who loves her just as she is.
I love how Nina and Hector’s love grow. Their love is not quite a slow burn because Hector has been burning for Valerie, Nina’s cousin-in-law. I liked how the story explored burning passion and love versus something that forms into friendship and grows steadily into love.
Valerie ~ she is hateful but her character was done so well. So well that I hated her. Here was this woman who had the love she always wanted but he was poor. As a woman she had to marry well and she did, breaking the heart of her first love in the process. When he comes back to her, she revels in his obsession with her, they are both obsessed with one another, but whereas Hector believes it’s love, for Valerie, it’s possession. Nina is the innocent miss but Valerie is the hard, calculated woman and I was fascinated with her downward spiral.
The Beautiful Ones swept me off my romantic feet. I was hoping Nina would get some satisfaction over Hector and Valerie’s games and she does come out triumphant. This story is emotional, tragic, hopeful and everything I want in a romance. I am a new fan of this author and look forward to reading more books from her.
Categories: Historical Fiction, WWII, London, Romance, Friendship, War, Bookshop
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Inspired by the true World War II history of the few bookshops to survive the Blitz, The Last Bookshop in London is a timeless story of wartime loss, love and the enduring power of literature.
August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler’s forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and blackout curtains that she finds on her arrival were not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she’d wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London.
Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed—a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.
How can I not enjoy a story about a bookshop? This one is even more inspirational because it’s about a bookshop in London during the Blitz in World War II. London was being bombed and yet this bookshop was there to keep people’s spirits up, keep them hoping, or keep their mind off what was happening.
Almost all the characters are wholesome, especially Grace who is a nice girl just wanting to get some work experience in London. She helps turn a bookshop around but other than that she is a very caring person ~ you can see it with the way she is with her friends and the new people she meets in London.
There is a minor romance in this story and what is a war story without a love story? Thankfully this one isn’t tragic, but sweet and hopeful. It’s always nice to remember when once upon a time, people did fall for each other through letter writing! It was all about patience back in the day.
I learned a lot of historical information from the book. I got a glimpse of all the organization people could volunteer for to help in the war. I thought that moment Grace and Viv go out on the town while bombs were dropping was pretty surreal! Also I enjoyed all of the St. Paul’s Cathedral history because it was one of my favorite places to visit when I did go to London few years ago. London really did survive!
Triggers: war, death, bombing
This was a super fast read, almost like the story glossed over the many things about war. I expected depth but it felt like a light historical fiction story. There was death and such but the story never felt heavy, unless I just never connected to the characters to feel their grief. Despite lacking depth, I think it held on to the message of Grace and the bookshop being an inspiration, a candle in the dark to so many suffering in the city during that time.
If you want to read a World War II story about books and hope, you will enjoy this one. Although it lacked the heaviness and depth of typical stories set during war time, I think the message about friendship, and community is a beautiful thing.
📚 ~ Yolanda
About the Author:
Madeline Martin is a USA TODAY bestselling author of historical romance novels filled with twists and turns, adventure, steamy romance, empowered heroines and the men who are strong enough to love them.
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them—setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course
Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.
One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose—selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.
In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.
The story is told through three perspectives, the past with Nella and Eliza and then present time with Caroline.
Caroline is going through some marriage trouble but I love how her curiosity to find out about an old apothecary bottle leads her to learning a lot of things about herself and the choices she made in life. I could relate to Caroline a lot.
Nella and Eliza’s story were fascinating ~ especially because that apothecary was one used by women to do harm. Was it okay for them to do that? In those times women had no resources to help them against men causing them harm so I can see why they resorted to poison. I felt for both Nella and Eliza and what happened to them.
The history about the apothecary is fascinating and I love how at the end of the book the author included recipes, non-harmful ones, of course!
There were moments I was more interested in Caroline’s life than Nella and Eliza’s but I think there was a good balance of both.
The twist in the end definitely tied in the women’s stories together.
I found the historical aspects of this story quite fascinating since I’ve always been drawn to stories about apothecaries and healing. It’s so interesting to learn about how people survived without modern medicine but in this case, how women survived some very bad situations they were trapped in. Caroline is the modern woman trying to get out of a situation she’s found herself in and researching Nella’s apothecary helps her find the strength to do the right thing.
📖 ~ Yolanda
About the Author:
Sarah Penner is the debut author of The Lost Apothecary, to be translated in eleven languages worldwide. She works full-time in finance and is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She and her husband live in St. Petersburg, Florida, with their miniature dachshund, Zoe. To learn more, visit slpenner.com.
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