From the moment I saw this book and read the description, I had such hopes and then I read the first sentence; chills went down my back. This was going to be the best seven hours of reading. But, when I got past that, there was serious buyer’s remorse. I wanted with all my heart for this book to be good, wishing it with every word that I read, but, I’m sorry to admit, it didn’t hold up. My first response would be that I was sorely disappointed.
Let me begin by saying that the best part of the whole book was the author’s note at the very end. Wow. That little side note of explanation told a better story of Caroline and what she did for the girls of Ravensbruck, not the 487 pages of actual story. Martha Hall Kelly took this amazing woman, who is supposedly the inspiration for writing the book, and turned her into a shallow, soul exasperating person with a fictional love interest that in my opinion brought the whole story to just above daytime soap opera. And, I will add, that this love interest was never fully wrapped up in the end.
This story begins right before WWII. Since Caroline is considered a war hero, I assumed that her actual heroism would occur during WWII. No, in fact, it actually occurs about 12 years after the war has ended. Something that is not alluded to till you read that part about 2/3rds in. Kelly did nothing to dissuade this and I feel many times played into that thought process by adding in certain facts in addition to including characters such as Herta and Kasia. A backstory is extremely important, but did we have to go through every detail of what occurred and then only spend a bare minimum on the heroism of getting the survives help?
And I also ask why was Herta included? Seeing a different point of view was interesting, but there was no Schindler’s List ending. Herta ended up being the same evil person feeling no remorse for her part in the experiments. For myself, and a few others, we expected Herta to turn around at some point and help save the girls. She went from having a conscience about killing to, oh look now, I can do this without a second thought. In essence, the character felt like two different people.
Kelly also included too many topics for each one to be fully developed. She touches on motherhood, mother-daughter relationships, mental illness, WWII which has enough material, concentration camps, politics, women’s rights, marriage and so on. Characters also felt thrown in. Major characters that had larger roles were left hanging. In my opinion, Kelly took on too large of a task. This could have been broken down, one POV, and multiple books. One book about the sisters and one book about Caroline.
One of the most intriguing characters was Kasia’s mother. With so much potential of even her own story, this character was in essence left hanging. She had such a chunk of the story she almost felt like a main character. For Kelly to only spend a few lines at the end to explain what happened to her was so sad. Instead of having Herta explain to Kasia what happened at the end, since Herta supposedly saw it, Kelly could have used the old teacher's adage of show don’t tell. If Kelly wrote a book about the mother, I would give her a second chance.
And my final mark against this book is the writing itself. What started as elegant prose that was sweeping me through the streets of New York and Lublin, turned into an annoying list of she did this and he did that. The description and sweeping melodies were lost about halfway in. It became dry and downright boring. No more getting into the character’s mind and experiencing how they felt and saw things. I continued to read only because I wanted to see how it all turned out.
In truth, though I had hoped for so much more, this book felt like a waste of my time. I will give it a 2 out of 5 stars. I’m glad that the Ravensbruck girls have had their story told. I had such better hopes for Caroline though.
