Happy #bookreview day!
A few years ago I read The Diplomat's Wife by Pam Jenoff. I knew at the time that it was part of a series, technically a sequel, but something that was fine to read alone as well. That book follows a minor character from the first book, but otherwise there was only a short mention of the protagonist of the first book from the series.
That first book is The Kommandant's Girl.
I actually didn't remember much about The Diplomat's Wife; certain scenes, an overall idea, but not the specifics and certainly not (SPOILER ALERT) what happens to Emma, since this first book ends with so many unanswered questions. In fact, I turned to one of the Facebook reader groups to ask for a reminder after I read The Kommandant's Girl, since it was driving me crazy!
Anyway, back to the book at hand: The Kommandant's Girl.
The Kommandant's Girl follows Emma, a young Jewish newlywed in Poland. She's only been married three weeks when Nazis occupy her city. Her new husband, Jacob, is forced to flee and hide underground, as he is a member of the resistance. She hides her wedding ring, her marriage certificate, and seeks out her parents, who've been moved to the ghetto. But then, one night, she is smuggled out by the resistance to live undercover with Jacob's aunt in Krakow. She takes on a new identity as Anna, a young Catholic woman.
Things get even more complicated when she meets Kommandant Richwalder, a high-ranking Nazi official. She soon is hired to work as his assistant, and is urged to use her position - and Richwalder's obvious attraction to her - to help the resistance. She must choose whether to compromise her position, her safety, her marriage vows, and her life to help Jacob. But as the war intensifies, and her relationship with the Kommandant intensifies, so does the danger.
This is a very classic historical fiction style book, and could be an interesting take on the WWII sub-genre, which is probably the most popular time era for historical fiction fans, and, even so, one of my favourites.
I'm pretty mixed on this one. On the one hand, a couple of the characters - Krysia and, actually, Kommandant Richwalder - were surprisingly complex and layered. I appreciated that Jenoff didn't simplify these characters. However other characters were generally either simplistic or superficial, which was a bit of a problem for me. I was pretty invested in the story, so that was definitely a plus, but in places the pacing went awry, which was most problematic at the end when the author seemed to be trying to wrap everything up at the same time.
The final concerning issue was the conversation and language, which was pretty modern and pretty Americanized. Generally, if that's the style, I'm totally fine with that, but it didn't seem a purposeful choice here, so it was a bit more abrupt and took me out of the story a few times.
If I was rating this on a 5-star scale (a la Goodreads), I'd give it a 3.5, personally, which, I believe, is about what I thought of The Diplomat's Wife as well.
Solid read, nothing particularly impressive, but definitely okay. Overall though I did like this one, and if you're a fan of historical fiction, particularly WWII historical fiction, this is very much a standard exemplar of that, so you'll probably like it.
What's your favourite time era for historical fiction?
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