Reviewed by Emma Crowley
When Pascal kisses Noemi and presses his mother’s silver locket into her hands, it is a moment she has been longing for her whole life. Growing up they were fearless, exploring the wild mountains in the Bavarian countryside together. But when war is declared, overnight their love becomes forbidden – Noemi is Jewish, while Pascal is being pressured to become a Hitler Youth officer by his father.
When Noemi’s parents are captured and taken to Dachau, she knows her hometown is no longer safe. With time running out, Pascal smuggles her onto a train, praying she will survive until the war is over. Devastated, he watches the train leave, promising himself that one day he will find the girl who took his heart and locket.
Noemi’s life on the run plunges her into new dangers, but she never loses hope that one day she will make her way home to her family again. She tells herself that family can never now include Pascal, but still she remembers the pendant he gave her, and hope flickers in her chest like a flame, that one day somehow they might reunite…
But as the world burns around her, will she have the strength to find and forgive him? And if she does, will their love last – or will the war’s shadows tear them both apart forever?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Secret Locket to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
A tense opening to Catherine Hokin’s new book, The Secret Locket, sees our female protagonist, Noemi, scrambling to get on a cattle train as she tries to escape her home town of Unterwald in Bavaria. Her parents have been taken and her life is in danger and the place she has called home since the day she was born is no longer safe for her. But what will the future bring for her considering it’s only 1941 and many more turbulent, threatening and cruel times lay ahead?
This brief prologue gave the reader an instant snapshot into the life of Noemi, whose family were Jewish, but then we are taken back to part one which is set in 1934.There were four parts in all.Each with their own distinctive voice and with plenty of events happening in each. Splitting the book into parts worked very well and each the phase of the war that Noemi was existing in was portrayed very well and in fact each part melded together in a brilliant way. There could have been a danger that they would have become separate entities and the story as a whole could have become disjointed but that didn’t happen at all.
The writing throughout the book was excellent and the pacing was brilliant. There were no filler in chapters or subplots that were unnecessary. Instead we follow Noemi, as she goes from a shy and reserved young girl who loved her hometown and her parents and enjoyed her friendship with Pascal whom she spend every possible minute with to a woman hell bent on revenge. In the early 1930’s the tide is turning and Hitler has come to power as head of the National Socialist party and Pascal’s father Viktor has literally brainwashed his son and many of the towns people. Jews were viewed as a plague who would pollute German blood. They were a contagion who lost Germany World War One and therefore weakened the German nation. All of this is untrue of course but Pascal can’t see this and his attendance at the Nuremburg rallies and his membership of the Hitler Youth inspires him further to do his bit for his country. But how can he be friends and perhaps something more with a girl who is Jewish? They do say you can’t have your cake and eat it too and initially that’s what Pascal wanted.
I thought he was the most foolish young boy and yes he may have been sacred of his father and the repercussions of not following the ideology but if his mother Carina could see what was so wrong with everything and she did her best to help Noemi why couldn’t Pascal do the same? Really he wasn’t man enough. I loved how Noemi knew that her friendship with Pascal ran deep but that the fate of her family and that of so many others was of the utmost importance to her. That she just couldn’t stand by and agree with anything that Pascal was supporting when it meant the extermination of her own people. She didn’t align with his views and I thought she was right to distance herself from him. Friendship and love were nagging away at her but she had to follow her head rather than her heart when it came to Pascal, yet for all she endures throughout the book there is a tiny part of her that battles with the question can one offer forgiveness in the hopes that something new, solid and true can emerge from the ashes?
The story moves back and forth between Pascal and Noemi as they navigate very different experiences of the war. I thought the two alternative viewpoints worked very well and although there was slightly less from Pascal’s perspective the chapters from his stance were hard hitting, insightful and impactful. Sent to Russia as an officer his opinions are slowly altering from what they once were and this is all due to what he witnesses and lives through. Still I don’t think I was overly enamoured with him and I think that’s because he wasn’t on Noemi’s side from the get go despite the strong and deep bonds of their friendship. Couldn’t he have been more like his mother than his father? He was totally deaf and blind to reality and ok he may not have known the extent of what was to come but surely knows the difference between right and wrong? It irritated me that he couldn’t see correct path to thread and what was coming down the line.He agreed with the long term plan for the Jews yet his best friend was Jewish. His mindset just didn’t make sense to me at all. He was a very divisive character and to be honest this would make for a great talking point for a book club as there is so much to question, to delve into and explore.
The pair are separated when her parents are taken and as I have mentioned Noemi is forced to flee. One of the good things that Pascal does is provide her with the means to escape even if it meant putting himself in danger for if he was discovered helping a Jew the repercussions from his father would have been unspeakable. The family businesses her parents worked so hard to build up are gone but Noemi vows one day she will return to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. She promises herself that she will find her parents and she clings to the hopes that they will survive the war. Noemi becomes a powerhouse of a woman as we follow her over the course of the war. From viewing Dachau from the outside, to Prague and Warsaw, she engages in resistance work alongside Matthias a Polish man she meets and a man whom I was desperately hoping that she would fall in love with. I had my fingers crossed throughout.
I won’t give any specific detail as to her time in each of the aforementioned places but suffice to say that shy country girl is long gone and lost and will never return. She is hardened by her experiences but she is filled with anger, knowledge and foresight and I loved how she battled with Matthias to try in any way possible to put a halt to such a monstrous machine. There were many setbacks, complications, pain, fear, suffering and desperate losses but each survived to mould and shape her into a fantastic character who put Pascal to shame. Yes, he too goes on his own personal journey but it was Noemi who I wanted to read all about and her transformation although through experiences she should never have had to go through was a remarkable and a satisfying one to read of. Noemi, certainly grows up quickly and she becomes a warrior, an impressive fighter full of justice, courage, bravery and skill. The scenes she witnesses and some of the things described in the book created such awful imagery in my head that I questioned how could she keep battling on. Truly she was incredible.
The Secret Locket of the title does have a specific place in the story and it’s meaning is valid but as it wasn’t always at the forefront of the story I am wondering would another title perhaps have been better for what was an excellent story? What that title could be I don’t know but it suggested the locket was a mystery waiting to be discovered which it wasn’t. But look that really is a minor personal niggle and I’m only saying it because I feel the incredible story within the pages of the stunning cover needs to be read by as many fan os historical fiction as possible. I’ve been a fan of Catherine Hokin’s work for a good while and in particular adored the Hanni Winter series but Noemi is up there for me along Hanni and that’s saying something considering how much I enjoyed that series.
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