December 1943. In the years before the rise of Hitler, the Gerber family’s summer cottage was filled with laughter. Now, as deep drifts of snow blanket the Black Forest, German dissenter Franka Gerber is alone and hopeless. Fervor and brutality have swept through her homeland, taking away both her father and her brother and leaving her with no reason to live.
That is, until she discovers an unconscious airman lying in the snow wearing a Luftwaffe uniform, his parachute flapping in the wind. Unwilling to let him die, Franka takes him to her family’s isolated cabin despite her hatred for the regime he represents. But when it turns out that he is not who he seems, Franka begins a race against time to unravel the mystery of the airman’s true identity. Their tenuous bond becomes as inseparable as it is dangerous. Hunted by the Gestapo, can they trust each other enough to join forces on a mission that could change the face of the war and their own lives forever?
Comment: I can't remember why I added this book to my TBR but the blurb seemed promising and I even convinced my friend H. to eventually buddy read it with me. This month we decided to tackle it but I must say that for me, it wasn't as great as I hoped it would be.
In this book we meet young woman Franka, who has become disillusioned by how the Nazis went from the saviors of the country to the crimes no one can really deny and why she had joined a resistance group which, sadly, didn't have the success they wanted.
Along with so many other Germans, Franka believed in the Nazi propaganda but soon realized they weren't what they seem and the choice to not follow their beliefs has led her to a path of suffering. That is how she sees herself back in her family holiday home, all alone and thinking about what to do. When her choice is done, she happens to find a man lying on the ground, clearly fallen from an airplane with his parachute and with two broken legs. Since she is a nurse, she can't ignore her conscience and tries to save him, even though it seems he is a member of the Luftwaffe and, thus, someone she can't respect.
Still, by saving him, she starts a chain of events that can make a difference in what happens to the fate of the war and, possibly, to her own life. The thing is, Franka discovers the man might not even be German at all...
In this historical fiction story, the author used quite a premise, not often seen in books set in WWII: the resistance groups created by German citizens who didn't follow the Nazis nor the actions they took against their own people, especially the German Jews.
The idea of the White Rose group, which did exist, is an important part of the plot but unlike what seems to have been publicized in some places, is not the starting point of this novel nor does the main plot revolve around that. In fact, we hear about Hans and Sophie Scholl, the main instigators of the movement, by recollections of the main character who, at some point, lived near them and knew them.
This means the plot is based on real historical events but that is not the path the author chose to go with this. The story is about Franka and her rescue of the man she finds while she remembers what happened to her and her family.
We also have the POV of the rescued man and we learn from early on he might not be who he says he is and indeed his identity is that of a spy. This makes for an interesting take on the plot, yes, but I don't think the author chose the best tools to present his story.
I think the best course of action could have been one of two choices: or he could have focused the plot on the White Rose movement, with all the historical facts he wanted but still fictionalizing other events and characters, or he could have developed the romance of the supposedly opposed main characters without much depth into historical facts besides the necessary to make this an historical novel. Other authors did it both ways and it worked.
However, this story is written in a way that makes the plot feel a little all over the place and without much focus to make it as emotional and special as I imagine the author intended. There are so many passages with fact dumping, and information given so impersonally that it doesn't feel part of the story. Or, should I say, it doesn't feel as if anyone thinking about it would present it that way.
It made for a slightly boring and formal read (at times) which the fiction parts didn't really help with.
The main characters were interesting enough but by the time they started to confide in each other, I was no longer captivated by the plot, so everything no longer mattered much to me.
Franka is a good heroine, she has learned quite a lesson when she saw what she was really defending and I did like who she was when she was interacting with the man she rescued. But her interactions with other characters didn't seem to be as well fleshed. He, on the other hand, felt like an addition and when things were seen from his POV I wasn't as focused on the story.
Still, all things considered, I'd say my biggest disappointment was with the writing itself. It just didn't feel as if it was aimed to allow readers to establish a connection with what was happening. Then, the end comes and things happen very quickly, we do meet several clichés on the way but the way the author chose to finish was certainly not believable. First, because he didn't develop the relationship between the main characters in such a way it would be fitting and second, how could it be that after all the dramas, life for those people could end in such a way? It just didn't felt likely, no clues had been done in a way to make the reader assume so.
In the end, I have to agree with the readers who say this book didn't offer anything new, it didn't offer any emotional nor sentimental content to make the experience more vibrant and the character's fate more intense... this was, in my opinion, an average book written in an average manner.
Grade: 5/10
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