In five years and close to 400 books reviewed this will be my second F. This book is supposedly an international best seller so maybe the fault is mine but I found it a complete mess and an excruciatingly difficult read.

World War II may be drawing to a close but Jakób and the rest of the Polish resistance intend to see it end on a bang. To insure that they plan to destroy a German troop transport but an unscheduled train reaches the bomb first. Filled with a load of prisoners on their way to a concentration camp rather than Nazi soldiers, the event turns triumph into tragedy. Fortunately, two young girls managed to squeeze through the slats on the rail car and jump to safety before the explosion. Unfortunately, one dies from illness the very next day.

Gretl, the survivor, is an orphaned German Jew which makes her doubly hated by the Polish people. When Jakób discovers her, guilt and – this is a direct quote – “fatherly compassion” (even though he is a young man and not a father figure) have him taking her home to his family. She spends the rest of the war with them but once the war is over, his mother wants her gone. Hearing about a group that is promising German war orphans a bright future in South Africa he makes sure Gretl is put on the list. Her gift for languages, cute appearance and sharp intelligence guarantee her spot and before you know it she is continents away. Naturally, she and Jakób meet again years down the road and fall in love.

I had a lot of problems with this book:

• I struggled with the language in this book. Simplistic and childish, it was difficult to read page after page of it.
• I struggled with the characters in the story. Gretl is considered a genius by just about everyone but she seemed vapid and occasionally idiotic to me.
• After spending hours with Jakób all I can tell you is that he doesn’t like Nazis or communists.
• The pacing of the story was horrific. It’s clear a lot of research was done because the author is well versed in the history of Poland during and immediately after the war. The struggle between those that wanted communism and those that didn’t and the whys of their opinions are very well documented here. But that pedantic documentation slowed the story down and pulled the focus away from what the plot should have focused on. The end result was a dry and unfocused read.

On top of that, the romance creeped me out. I’ve read plenty of May/December romances that didn’t give me the nasty vibe this one did but here, it creeped me out. Jakób was more a father/brother to Gretl than potential love interest and she is so childlike (even as she ages) that the thought of him being romantic with her just didn’t work for me at all.

And trigger warning, Gretl changes religion at least three times but I am pretty sure it is four. She starts (I think) as a German Protestant, then is Jewish after her father dies and they are forced to live with her grandmother, then Catholic while in Poland and finally Protestant when she moves to South Africa. My mind was too numb to figure out what the significance of all the change was beyond the role it played in her survival.

I love World War II romances but I struggled to read this book and found that my mind wandered even as my fingers turned the pages and my eyes skimmed over the words. Gretl and Jakób’s story in no way moved me or connected with me at all. As I said before, it icked me out a bit. I’m just glad that now I’ve finished my review I can try to scrub my mind of its existence.