Emma's Review: The Photographer's Secret by Ellie Midwood

Germany, 1944: Nazi banners blowing in the wind, Maggie Sullivan takes her first steps into enemy territory. Armed only with a camera and a US press pass, Maggie never backs down from danger. But close to her heart is a secret; one that she can never share. Maggie was born in Germany. Years ago, she and her mother were forced to flee Berlin, leaving her siblings behind. The US Army are Maggie’s protectors for now, but she wakes each night in a cold sweat wondering: what will they do if they discover her past?

Every day Maggie works tirelessly to prove the horrifying truth about what Nazis are doing in the camps. But inching closer to the barbed wire, an inscription on an officer’s report grips her with an ice-like fear. Her family’s name. She’s desperate to know more, but it would risk her entire mission. She must save the innocents, even if it means letting the secrets of her own past slip through her fingers…

Then the unthinkable happens. Just as she snaps her first shot of the camp, Maggie feels rough hands snatch the camera from her grip. Someone knows about her secret, and if she’s captured, her photos will never leave Germany. As Maggie fights to prove her innocence, will her story be lost forever? Can she survive long enough to help free the prisoners in the camp and heal the trauma of her past?

Book Links: Kindle or Paperback 

Emma's Review: When the World Went Silent by Ellie Midwood

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Deaf since the age of five, Mina has had to fight for everything she has, including her place at an Austrian university to study physics. She has never felt accepted—until she meets fellow student Siggy, and her heart stops at the kindness in his bright blue eyes.

But Mina’s world comes crashing down when the SS arrive at her door and escort her to Berlin. She’s terrified it’s because of her disability—she’s heard the awful rumours about the Nazi euthanasia program. So relief washes over her when she’s told as one of Germany’s brightest minds, she’s been recruited to work for the government.

Soon, this relief turns to horror when Mina learns why she’s truly here: they want her to build the atomic bomb that will win Germany the war. Mina knows if she refuses they will kill her. But if she does as they say, she could be responsible for the death of millions.

With Siggy’s help, Mina vows to do everything she can to sabotage the project. Will they save the world from a devastating catastrophe? Or will everything they’ve risked be in vain? 

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Emma's Review: I Have to Save Them by Ellie Midwood

Reviewed by Emma Crowley 

Betrayed by her own husband for being a German resistance fighter, Orli has no one left in the world as she stumbles from the cattle truck onto the frostbitten grounds of Auschwitz. She has arrived expecting to be sentenced to certain death. Instead, as a trained nurse, she is assigned to work in the infirmary to assist Dr Josef Mengele.

Soon, Orli learns Mengele is known as the Angel of Death, and is the most feared man in Auschwitz. At his hands, thousands of healthy inmates are cruelly killed and experimented on: and Orli is expected to assist him. She realises that her resistance work is not over. From inside the infirmary, she will secretly try to save as many souls as she can.

Orli starts to smuggle medicine to the most desperate of patients. But when Mengele instructs her to find children, she knows it isn’t enough… she has to keep him away. With the help of her fellow nurses, Orli plans to fake a typhus outbreak.

But can Orli really fool one of the most powerful men in Auschwitz? And if Mengele discovers her plan, will the cost of saving others be her own life?

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Emma's Review: The Child Who Lived by Ellie Midwood

Reviewed by Emma Crowley 

Europe, 1945: I clutch my perfect auburn-haired-baby to my chest, desperate for her to take her first breath. She has to see the world outside the walls of this concentration camp and breathe freedom instead of death, she has to live…

As Lore is pushed through the towering gates of Mauthausen concentration camp, she holds little hope of ever leaving. After being caught using her position as a typist for the SS to try and save her Jewish friends, she is now considered an enemy of the state. Lore knows that for those who commit treason, death is usually the only way out.

But soon, when Lore meets political prisoner Wolf, his burning desire for freedom and unshakable faith in justice ignites a flicker of hope deep inside her heart. Together, they commit the ultimate act of resistance against the brutal SS by falling desperately in love. And when Lore falls pregnant, they know they have to not only fight to survive, but plan to escape.

After secretly giving birth in her barracks, Lore’s heart shatters as she hands her miracle baby over to Wolf, knowing she is too weak to join them. Through tears and whispered promises to meet again, Wolf steps back into the darkness, and Lore is left questioning if any of them will survive, and if they do, will they ever find each another again?

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Emma's Review: The Undercover Secretary by Ellie Midwood

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Dora has lost everything to the Nazis. Her dearest friends have disappeared into thin air. Her parents have been imprisoned in concentration camps and murdered for the crime of simply existing. She has no idea if her darling husband, the devoted and brave Alfred, is even alive.

Though her world is crashing and burning around her, Dora refuses to give in to Hitler’s tyranny. The Nazis may have broken her heart, but they will not break her spirit.

Secretly working for the underground network in France, Dora risks her life on the most dangerous mission in the history of the local resistance. She goes undercover as the secretary of the Head of Gestapo; a soldier with a brutal reputation. A cold-blooded killer.

She is tasked with leaking the names of the SS to the British press. Every day, she rubs shoulders with the enemy. She makes coffee for the people she despises. She types letters for the monsters who killed her family. At any second, she could be found out…

Can she survive, turning the tide of the war and saving thousands of lives? Or will those she loved the most in the world, and millions of other innocent people, have died in vain?

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Emma's Review: The Wife who Risked Everything by Ellie Midwood

Reviewed by Emma Crowley 

“We’re not moving until you release our men!” Margot shouts, her heart racing. In the snow, the Berlin streets dusted with white, she shifts from foot to foot with the small crowd of wives by the iron gates. She has lived in terror that this moment would come: Nazis have arrested her beloved husband.

Margot, a German seamstress, and Jochen, a Jewish artist, were madly in love. But this became a forbidden act in Hitler’s Germany. The days of Jochen filling their sixth-floor apartment with roses to surprise her vanished. Their friends started crossing the street to avoid them. They lost their jobs. And then they found themselves scrabbling for breadcrumbs on the cold cobbles outside the home that was once their own.

Yet even as their world came crashing down, they had each other. Until now.

Now, Margot risks her life to protest outside Gestapo headquarters. As days pass, hundreds are gathered. They refuse to move, even when enemy planes cross the clouds and bombs fall to the ground. Yet defying the Nazis is a death sentence…

Will this evil war ever end? Will she and Jochen survive? What will it take for Margot to see the love of her life again?

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Emma's Review: The White Rose Network by Ellie Midwood

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Sophie was born to be a rebel, raised by parents who challenged the brutal Nazi regime. Determined to follow in their footsteps, she leaves for university, defying Hitler’s command for women to stay at home.

On her first day in Munich, Sophie’s brother Hans introduces her to his dear friend. When she meets Alexander, with his raven-black hair and brooding eyes, she knows instantly that she isn’t alone. There are more courageous souls like her, who will fight against evil.

Together, and with others who also refuse to back down, they form the White Rose Network. In an underground vault, Sophie and Alexander conspire in whispers, falling in love as they plot against Hitler. Promising her heart to Alexander is the most dangerous act of all––with each risk they take, they get closer to capture.

As snowflakes fall on a frosty February morning, Sophie and her brother scatter Munich University with leaflets calling for resistance: “We will not be silent; we will not leave you in peace!”

But their lives hang in the balance, with the secret police offering a reward to anyone with information on the White Rose Network. It is only a matter of time before the Gestapo closes in… And when Sophie is imprisoned in an interrogation room, staring a Nazi officer in the eye, will she take their secrets to her grave? Will she sacrifice her freedom for love?

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Emma's Review: The Girl Who Survived by Ellie Midwood

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

For eighteen-year-old Ilse life is unrecognizable. A year ago, she wasn’t forced to wear a star on her clothes. A year ago, her parents were alive, not yet killed by their own countrymen. A year ago, she had her freedom.

Now, at the break of dawn, she steps off the cattle train into a Minsk ghetto. This is Ilse’s new home: trapped by barbed wire, surrounded by SS guards she is forbidden to look in the eye, with no choice but to trade the last of her belongings for scraps of food. Sentenced for the crime of simply existing, she doesn’t expect to live past the summer.

Yet the prisoners in the ghetto refuse to give up––the underground resistance is plotting their escape. Ilse’s first act of defiance is smuggling from the munitions factory, slipping bullets into the lining of her pockets.

But this is just the beginning… When Ilse meets Wilhem, a local SS administrative officer, she never dreams that her greatest rebellion will be falling for him. Wilhem promises that she will survive, even if the cost is his life. But in a world of such danger, daring to love is the most dangerous risk of all…

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Emma's Review: The Girl in the Striped Dress by Ellie Midwood

Reviewed by Emma Crowley 

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he whispered, pressing a note into her hand. Her entire body trembled when she read it: I am in love with you.

Helena steps off the cattle train onto the frozen grounds of Auschwitz. She has twenty-four hours to live. Scheduled to be killed tomorrow, she is not even tattooed with a prison number. As the snow falls around her, she shivers, knowing that she has been sentenced to death for a crime she didn’t commit.

When a gray-clad officer marches towards Helena and pulls her away, she fears the worst. Instead, he tells her that it’s one of the guard’s birthdays and orders her to serenade him.

Inside the SS barracks the air is warm, thick with cigarette smoke and boisterous conversation. After she sings to the guard, Franz, he presses a piece of cake into her hands––the first thing she has eaten in days. On the spot, he orders her life to be saved, forever changing the course of her fate.

What follows is a love story that was forbidden, that should have been impossible, and yet saved both of their lives––and hundreds of others––in more ways than one.

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Emma's Review: The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz by Ellie Midwood

 Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Nobody leaves Auschwitz alive.

Mala, inmate 19880, understood that the moment she stepped off the cattle train into the depths of hell. As an interpreter for the SS, she uses her position to save as many lives as she can, smuggling scraps of bread to those desperate with hunger.

Edward, inmate 531, is a camp veteran and a political prisoner. Though he looks like everyone else, with a shaved head and striped uniform, he’s a fighter in the underground Resistance. And he has an escape plan.

They are locked up for no other sin than simply existing. But when they meet, the dark shadow of Auschwitz is lit by a glimmer of hope. Edward makes Mala believe in the impossible. That despite being surrounded by electric wire, machine guns topping endless watchtowers and searchlights roaming the ground, they will leave this death camp.

A promise is made––they will escape together or they will die together. What follows is one of the greatest love stories in history…

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Emma's Top Books of 2020

I wouldn’t normally do a books of the year post. But with the year that has been in it, reading has been an enjoyable escape for so many people, not to mention there have been an abundance of brilliant books  published this year. So I decided to look back at all the books that I have read this year and pick some of my absolute favourites as quite often there are some brilliant books that deserve to be read and that may have evaded the attention of people. I was originally going to pick five books but I couldn’t narrow it down so I have gone with ten and they are in no particular order as I found it very difficult to rate these chosen books from one to ten. Without further ado, here are my top picks from 2020.

https://shazsbookblog.blogspot.com/2020/01/emmas-review-three-hours-by-rosamund.html

No books of the year could be complete without the utterly brilliant Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton. It’s not normally my genre of choice but all the hype and praise lauded on this phenomenal book was definitely worth it. I read it back at the very beginning of the year and it has stayed with me ever since. I recommended it to so many friends who then went on to read it and they loved it just as much as I did. It’s powerful, tense, gripping and a book that you will not leave out of your hand until you finish it. 

Set during a blizzard as a school community becomes cut off from the world it follows three hours where the lives of all involved are turned upside down. A maniac stalks the grounds and has taken the pupils and staff hostage. How much can change in three hours? Will they escape with their lives in tact? 

Rosamund Lupton captures so perfectly the sheer terror and hell each and every character is experiencing. From the students locked away with their teacher in the schools theatre who continue to rehearse MacBeth as a way of not giving into the situation they find themselves in, to the teacher in the pottery room in the woods with a group of younger children who hide under their desks continuing to make figurines oblivious as to what stalks the woods right outside the window. It’s a stunning read that leaves you breathless, I can’t wait to see what Rosamund Lupton brings us next.

https://shazsbookblog.blogspot.com/2020/11/emmas-review-violinist-of-auschwitz-by.html

As historical fiction is my favourite genre, I couldn’t not include a book from this category. I read The Violinist of Auschwitz by Ellie Midwood towards the later end of the year and it completely blew me away. When you read so much in the same genre, and specifically books set during World War Two, you can become tired of reading about the same subject matter even though what you are reading about has had such a lasting and devastating impact on the world. Ellie Midwood was a brilliant find and renewed my faith in the genre as she shone a light on a story told many times - the incarceration of so many innocent people in the Nazi death camps. Yet she brought something new, fresh, innovative and gripping to the subject matter and I thought this was an amazing read that I raced through as I was so engrossed in the story unfolding. 

Right from the opening line, this story is absorbing, thrilling, tense and very very powerful and is a stark reminder lest we should not forget of the horror and suffering endured by so many because of the actions of a mad man. You run the gauntlet of emotions with each of the characters and at times this is a very difficult book to read as the images and situations written about are horrific and the picture built up in your mind is a very difficult one to shake. The writing is exceptional throughout this book and there were endless paragraphs or even a simple sentence that I had to stop and reread several times just to fully appreciate what was being conveyed and the impact it was making. 

No doubt about it The Violinist of Auschwitz is a book that deserves great success and to be read by as many people as possible. I cant wait to read her next book The Girl Who Escaped Auschwitz coming in March.

Emma's Review: The Violinist of Auschwitz by Ellie Midwood

 Reviewed by Emma Crowley

In Auschwitz, every day is a fight for survival. Alma is inmate 50381, the number tattooed on her skin in pale blue ink. She is cooped up with thousands of others, torn from loved ones, trapped in a maze of barbed wire. Every day people disappear, never to be seen again.

This tragic reality couldn’t be further from Alma’s previous life. An esteemed violinist, her performances left her audiences spellbound. But when the Nazis descend on Europe, none of that can save her…

When the head of the women’s camp appoints Alma as the conductor of the orchestra, performing for prisoners trudging to work as well as the highest-ranking Nazis, Alma refuses: “they can kill me but they won’t make me play”. Yet she soon realizes the power this position offers: she can provide starving girls with extra rations and save many from the clutches of death.

This is how Alma meets Miklos, a talented pianist. Surrounded by despair, they find happiness in joint rehearsals, secret notes, and concerts they give side by side––all the while praying that this will one day end. But in Auschwitz, the very air is tainted with loss, and tragedy is the only certainty… In such a hopeless place, can their love survive?

Amazon Links: Kindle or Paperback