From Sand and Ash by Amy Harmon

Title: From Sand and Ash
Author: Amy Harmon
Pages: 386
Year: 2016
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Rating: 5

Goodreads Synopsis: Italy, 1943—Germany occupies much of the country, placing the Jewish population in grave danger during World War II.

As children, Eva Rosselli and Angelo Bianco were raised like family but divided by circumstance and religion. As the years go by, the two find themselves falling in love. But the church calls to Angelo and, despite his deep feelings for Eva, he chooses the priesthood.

Now, more than a decade later, Angelo is a Catholic priest and Eva is a woman with nowhere to turn. With the Gestapo closing in, Angelo hides Eva within the walls of a convent, where Eva discovers she is just one of many Jews being sheltered by the Catholic Church.

But Eva can’t quietly hide, waiting for deliverance, while Angelo risks everything to keep her safe. With the world at war and so many in need, Angelo and Eva face trial after trial, choice after agonizing choice, until fate and fortune finally collide, leaving them with the most difficult decision of all.

♠

It’s taken me a while to review this book, simply because I am at a loss for words as to how to translate my feelings for this book into a review. Amy Harmon has proved, first in The Bird and the Sword and now in From Sand and Ash, her ability to create a work of art using words alone. I want to read everything this author has ever written, even her shopping lists.

From Sand and Ash is a story of contradictions, contrasting violence with love, fear with bravery, good with evil, and death with life. Amy brings together the best and worst of humanity on these pages, evoking a relentless emotional response that will have you laughing one minute and sobbing the next. The story of Eva Roselli and Angelo Bianco is as enchanting as it is brutal. The love they share, forbidden both by duty and by law, is all consuming despite the horrific circumstances in which this love inhabits. Amy doesn’t disguise the pain and atrocities her characters face, but immerses her readers in a frightening and turbulent time in history. This book serves, not only as a story of survival and love, but as a reminder that we are all the same. No matter where we come from, where we live, who we pray to, or what we believe in, we all seek joy and purpose. This book is a harrowing demonstration of what happens when we stop trying to understand each other, when we take what makes us different and use it as a means to divide, hurt, and demean. This message is hammered in on every page, in every sentence, in every word. When we refuse to learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it.

As someone who was raised in a Catholic family, I understood Angelo’s devotion to God. However, his self-righteousness and desire for martyrdom were very frustrating. The relationship and tension between Angelo and Eva was all consuming, and it tugged on my heartstrings to see just how much he loved her. It actually brought tears to my eyes to see just how much Angelo worshiped Eva’s mind, body, and soul. Even though he is a priest, you can’t help but root for them no matter how wrong and blasphemous it is in the eyes of the Catholic Church.

In the author’s note, Amy mentions that she researched Judaism and Catholicism, but wasn’t sure if she brought them justice. I can’t speak for Judaism, but I can say that she captured the Catholic religion beautifully.  I think both of these religions have a negative stigma to them, brought about throughout history due to a lack of understanding. Amy Harmon not only understands these religions, but she makes them beautiful. Even if you aren’t religious by any means, I think you can still appreciate the role each religion plays in this book.

My biggest, and only, complaint I had while reading this book was how lucky these characters were, to the point where it was almost unbelievable. There were times when Eva and Angelo should have gotten caught, but didn’t. There were characters that had happy endings that seemed too good to be true, endings that fell too easily into place, or were resolved too quickly. However, none of these things took away from the bigger picture. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year, and its message is still relevant for us today. Highly, highly recommended.

 

In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen

Title: In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II
Author: Rhys Bowen
Pages: 398
Year: 2017
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Rating: 2.5/5

Goodreads Synopsis: World War II comes to Farleigh Place, the ancestral home of Lord Westerham and his five daughters, when a soldier with a failed parachute falls to his death on the estate. After his uniform and possessions raise suspicions, MI5 operative and family friend Ben Cresswell is covertly tasked with determining if the man is a German spy. The assignment also offers Ben the chance to be near Lord Westerham’s middle daughter, Pamela, whom he furtively loves. But Pamela has her own secret: she has taken a job at Bletchley Park, the British code-breaking facility.

As Ben follows a trail of spies and traitors, which may include another member of Pamela’s family, he discovers that some within the realm have an appalling, history-altering agenda. Can he, with Pamela’s help, stop them before England falls?

Inspired by the events and people of World War II, writer Rhys Bowen crafts a sweeping and riveting saga of class, family, love, and betrayal.

♠

I read this book as part of the Kindle First  program.

I wanted to love this book, I really did. I loved the cover, I thought the story line sounded intriguing, but somewhere between that and actually reading the book I lost interest very quickly.

The writing wasn’t terrible, but it was very “paint by numbers.”  I thought the story was very predictable, the characters were one-dimensional, and the action scenes fell flat. It was almost like Bowen wasn’t sure how to portray her thoughts on paper, so she just summarized what she wanted to happen and moved on. Each scene left me wanting more, or thinking there would be more to it.  I only kept reading because I wanted answers to the dead parachutist mystery, but by the time we answered that question I was hanging on by a thread.

To make matters worse, stereotypes ran rampant, especially in the daughters. Of the five girls, we have the mothering one, the baby, the smart one, the brave one, and the annoying one. All characters you have seen before and they all have pet nicknames. Those of which, would have been cute if they hadn’t been so inconsistently used.

Dido is the most annoying character of the book, possibly of any book I’ve ever read in my lifetime. All she does is bitch and moan about how she wasn’t able to come out and be presented by the court because of the stupid war. “Wahhh… I want to go to parties, meet men, and have sex!” Girl, chill. Dido isn’t alone in this mindset because many of the aristocratic characters we revolve around for much of the book don’t seem to realize there is a war on either. They look at it as more of an inconvenience. When Dido does the unforgivable toward the end of the book, I wasn’t surprised or amused in the slightest. It was inevitable, an accident looking for a place to happen, if you will. Or if you won’t.

Also, every character interaction is laden with overly British phrases like “jolly,” “blimey,” “crikey,” and “bloody.”

WOW is this book set in ENGLAND??? I had no idea!

I know Bowen is from the UK and she probably would know what Brits are like better than I would, but it didn’t feel genuine or authentic to me. It was more like she wrote this book for non-Brits and felt like she needed to pound the message into our heads that THIS. BOOK. IS. BRITISH. I get it. Message received.

And for the cheese factor, here is a sample exchange between the baby sister, Phoebe, and the villain.

“Don’t you hurt Alfie, you horrid man,” Phoebe screamed.

“What the hell. Go on, you little brats. Go. No one can stop me now, anyway.”

Who else read this in their best cartoon villain voice?

Side note: Why are we using periods if we’re screaming? Although, punctuation is the least of my worries…

As far as historical fiction goes, I’ve read better. This was well researched, but poorly executed. I don’t know who I would recommend this to, it has a younger reader feel to it, but then talks about sex throughout the whole book. Not that there is anything graphic, but it’s present.

Because I feel like I need to say something positive:

• This book was very well researched.
• I was surprised at the end, Bowen did a good job of leading us away from the ultimate villain.
• This book got a lot of 5 star reviews on Amazon, so just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean you won’t!

My Favorite Reads of 2016

I don’t think this one needs an explanation… Here are my favorite reads of 2016!

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Despite their differences, sisters Vianne and Isabelle

have always been close. Younger, bolder Isabelle lives in Paris while Vianne is content with life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. But when the Second World War strikes, Antoine is sent off to fight and Vianne finds herself isolated so Isabelle is sent by their father to help her.

As the war progresses, the sisters’ relationship and strength are tested. With life changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Vianne and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions.

The Infernal Devices Trilogy by Cassandra Clare

Clockwork Angel: In a time when Shadowhunters are barely winning the fight against the forces of darkness, one battle will change the course of history forever. Welcome to the Infernal Devices trilogy, a stunning and dangerous prequel to the New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments series.

The year is 1878. Tessa Gray descends into London’s dark supernatural underworld in search of her missing brother. She soon discovers that her only allies are the demon-slaying Shadowhunters—including Will and Jem, the mysterious boys she is attracted to. Soon they find themselves up against the Pandemonium Club, a secret organization of vampires, demons, warlocks, and humans. Equipped with a magical army of unstoppable clockwork creatures, the Club is out to rule the British Empire, and only Tessa and her allies can stop them…

Clockwork Prince: In the magical underworld of Victorian London, Tessa Gray has at last found safety with the Shadowhunters. But that safety proves fleeting when rogue forces in the Clave plot to see her protector, Charlotte, replaced as head of the Institute. If Charlotte loses her position, Tessa will be out on the street—and easy prey for the mysterious Magister, who wants to use Tessa’s powers for his own dark ends.

With the help of the handsome, self-destructive Will and the fiercely devoted Jem, Tessa discovers that the Magister’s war on the Shadowhunters is deeply personal. He blames them for a long-ago tragedy that shattered his life. To unravel the secrets of the past, the trio journeys from mist-shrouded Yorkshire to a manor house that holds untold horrors, from the slums of London to an enchanted ballroom where Tessa discovers that the truth of her parentage is more sinister than she had imagined. When they encounter a clockwork demon bearing a warning for Will, they realize that the Magister himself knows their every move—and that one of their own has betrayed them.

Tessa finds her heart drawn more and more to Jem, but her longing for Will, despite his dark moods, continues to unsettle her. But something is changing in Will—the wall he has built around himself is crumbling. Could finding the Magister free Will from his secrets and give Tessa the answers about who she is and what she was born to do?

As their dangerous search for the Magister and the truth leads the friends into peril, Tessa learns that when love and lies are mixed, they can corrupt even the purest heart.

Clockwork Princess: Danger and betrayal, love and loss, secrets and enchantment are woven together in the breathtaking finale to the #1 New York Times bestselling Infernal Devices Trilogy, prequel to the internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series.

THE INFERNAL DEVICES WILL NEVER STOP COMING

A net of shadows begins to tighten around the Shadowhunters of the London Institute. Mortmain plans to use his Infernal Devices, an army of pitiless automatons, to destroy the Shadowhunters. He needs only one last item to complete his plan: he needs Tessa Gray.

Charlotte Branwell, head of the London Institute, is desperate to find Mortmain before he strikes. But when Mortmain abducts Tessa, the boys who lay equal claim to her heart, Jem and Will, will do anything to save her. For though Tessa and Jem are now engaged, Will is as much in love with her as ever.

As those who love Tessa rally to rescue her from Mortmain’s clutches, Tessa realizes that the only person who can save her is herself. But can a single girl, even one who can command the power of angels, face down an entire army?

Danger and betrayal, secrets and enchantment, and the tangled threads of love and loss intertwine as the Shadowhunters are pushed to the very brink of destruction in the breathtaking conclusion to the Infernal Devices trilogy.

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

Alicia: My Story by Alicia Appleman-Jurman

After losing her entire family to the Nazis at age 13, Alicia Appleman-Jurman went on to save the lives of thousands of Jews, offering them her own courage and hope in a time of upheaval and tragedy. Not since The Diary of Anne Frank has a young voice so vividly expressed the capacity for humanity and heroism in the face of Nazi brutality.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Title: The Nightingale
Author: Kristin Hannah
Pages: 440
Year: 2015
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Rating: 5/5

Goodreads Synopsis: FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real–and deadly–consequences.

With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah takes her talented pen to the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France–a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

♠

This book took me a while to get into, but once I did I just fell in love with Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac. Their story was so beautiful, and it reduced me to tears. (Robot status report: does not compute.) As the goodreads synopsis says, Vianne and Isabelle are two somewhat estranged sisters living in France. All but abandoned by their father after the death of their mother, Vianne and Isabelle have each grown up very differently. Older sister Vianne is timid, introverted, and dependent on her husband. (If she was an animal, she would be a mouse for sure.) Isabelle, having been bounced between boarding schools since she was a child, is rebellious and immature. She doesn’t have a problem with saying what she thinks and standing up for what she believes in. It is no surprise that when the war breaks out, each sister deals with it in a different way.

Isabelle is outraged by the German occupation and immediately joins the resistance. She rebels against them in any way that she can, even placing Vianne and her daughter in danger in the process. She receives an opportunity to go to Paris and seizes it, never letting Vianne know the grave reality of what she is doing. For her last name, Mauriac, she becomes known as “The Nightingale,”  and graduates from passing out flyers to escorting downed air pilots back across the border into allied territory. Basically, she is known by the Germans as Undesirable No. 1 (for my HP fans out there). Isabelle grows up a great deal throughout the story – from an 18 year-old girl who falls in love-at-first-sight with an escaped jailbird, to a young woman who has dedicated her life to the service of others.

While Isabelle’s character teetered on the edge of annoying in the beginning of the novel, I couldn’t have been more satisfied with where she ends up. I found her to be so brave, throwing caution to the wind and never letting up in her resolve. She never once thought about what could happen if she was caught, only the task at hand. I am a cautious person by nature, so the fact that she would do half of the things she did was inspiring to me.

Vianne, whose husband has gone off to defend the Maginot line, slides into survival mode and takes every day as it comes. That is, until they start taking away the Jews. She begins saving Jewish children before they can be taken away, and hiding them in the orphanage at her local church. One of them, her best friend’s son, Vianne adopts as her own. All this, under the nose of the German Officer living in her home.

Vianne also went through a huge character transformation throughout the book. While she may have been timid and unsure of herself in the beginning, the war turns her into a warrior of sorts. While Isabelle is out fighting on the front lines, Vianne is fighting on the home front. She fights for the survival of her family, her friends, and her country. Literally and figuratively. Even though she is not always actively and outwardly resisting the Germans, she does it in small ways that make a difference in every life she touches. While Isabelle is the thunder and lightning, Vianne is the rain. She is comforting and subtle, playing a part in the storm.

At the beginning of the book, we find out that only one sister has survived the war. Hannah does a great job of tipping the scales to either side, making it appear as if one sister is doomed and then tipping it towards the other. I have to say, while the book definitely led up to it, I didn’t expect the outcome it gave me. I kept hoping for a different end. However, I think she tied up all the loose ends nicely. Some, more abruptly than others.

All in all, it was a fabulous read. I would recommend this to anyone that has a sister, it definitely gave me a new appreciation for mine.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Pages: 552
Year: 2006
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Rating: 5/5

Goodreads Synopsis: It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

♠

The Book Thief was so incredibly unique to anything else that I have ever read, simply because it was narrated by Death.I expected Death to be a dark and morbid voice, but he actually cast an illuminating light on one of the darkest times in human history.

I do not carry a sickle or a scythe.
I only wear a hooded black robe when it’s cold.
And I don’t have those skull-like
facial features you seem to enjoy
pinning on me from a distance. You
want to know what I truly look like?
I’ll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.

Giving Death human like qualities and shattering our commonplace perceptions of death was a bit discontenting for me, it is so much easier to deal with death as a distant and inhuman concept rather than one of the most human things you will ever do. However, Death has some incredibly insightful observations and dry humor that no other character could have brought into the story. He has no patience for mystery either, although the anticipation of what is to come makes it so much worse. Death drops several bombs throughout the story that don’t happen until much later, and I was on the edge of my seat just waiting and hoping that they wouldn’t actually happen.

This isn’t the first book that I have read about this side of World War II. However, Death does a good job of making us feel compassion and sorrow for people who have been dubbed by history as evil. Some of the characters in The Book Thief are members of the Nazi party, willing or otherwise, and view Jews as no better than rats. Others are hiding Jews in their basements. Others still are innocent children. But they are still human, and are we any better if we do not feel sorry for them?

Final thoughts: I definitely recommend this to everyone. The movie doesn’t give it justice, so if you have seen the movie and have never read the book I highly highly recommend it.