Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

I'm dying of allergies today (why can't the weather just stay one way forever?), but I did manage to push aside the puffy eyes and sore jaw to finish the last ten percent of this book, because even if I was dying of everything, I would have done the same thing.

New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.
 
An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.
 
For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.
 
The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

Last week, I finished reading another war book, but that one had been about World War I (a fact that eluded me throughout the entire book until someone finally said a year). When I started reading this one, I thought it would be too much war for me. I'm not too keen on war fiction, mainly because it makes me too sad and angry, and those are not good feelings for me to have while trying to read a book. You should see me trying to read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's a mess.

This book brought up all those feelings, but not until more than halfway through the book when I went to the author's website. She wrote about the real Caroline Ferriday (a name I knew, but couldn't place) and Dr. Herta Oberheuser (a name I definitely knew, but didn't realize it). At first, reading about these characters was like reading any other book: I was sad when they went through upsetting things, and happy when they saw a ray of sunshine. But after I went back to the book from the author's website, all my emotions...tripled.

Kasia is sixteen when she goes into Ravensbrück, the notorious all-women's concentration camp, with her sister, mother, and friends. She spends four years in this hell, four years of being beaten, starved, and worse: she is one of the "Rabbits", a test subject for the Reich, operated on by the only female doctor at Ravensbrück, Dr. Herta Oberheuser. Caroline Ferriday has her hand in the war, but she doesn't come into the Rabbits story until they come to her.

Before I realized these people were real (Kasia is based on a real life person), I was sitting there, thinking, Gosh, I could really do without this Herta woman. She seems terrible. Well, yeah, good job, Bree. She is terrible. She was terrible in the book, and she was terrible in real life. She's cold, methodical, and I realize that this makes her sound like a serial killer, but really. She operated on these young women without a moment's hesitation, all because it was for the good of the Reich. There are moments where Herta seems to have feelings, where she realizes how ridiculous and cruel this all is, but she manages to push those emotions aside so she can become the top doctor at Ravensbrück.

The younger Kasia was most relatable, because her anger fed her throughout her four years at the concentration camp. She planned revenge and knew that she would get out, if for nothing more than to avenge her friends. But after she was out and grew older, she became like a painting: a frightening image of what can happen when one allows black hatred to eat one up. Kasia gets out, has her sister, marries the love of her life, has a child, and she is still unhappy. Her anger consumes her and it destroys everyone around her. She doesn't understand how to move on from Ravensbrück and the horrors she went through there. Even though I have no idea of the pain that place caused her - and I will never understand - the lesson that she teaches is so universal, and I prayed for her to find some semblance of a life.

Caroline was hard to read, mainly because the happy ending I wanted for her, I knew she wouldn't get. Her love story is beautiful and romantic, but heartbreaking. What I adored about her story, though, is that the love part was just that: a part. She had so much more going on in her life and she never let it stop her. Sure, she would wallow in bed for awhile after a particularly bad episode involving a certain man, but she always picked herself back up and went on with her life, because she knew there were others out there that needed her help. She sent care packages to orphans in France and opened her home to some of the Rabbits when they traveled to America. She wasn't perfect, but she was strong and independent, and it was so lovely to read about someone like that during those times.

I started off this book wondering if I would like it at all, but it ended up adoring it. I think knowing the backstory of the characters helped a lot. This usually doesn't do anything for me, but this time, I don't know. It adds another layer of tragedy to an already terribly tragic story.

Now for the good news. Since I procrastinated so much on this book, you only have to wait another week before it comes out! So, seriously, get your butt to your nearest bookstore (or just open a new tab) and buy this book. It's beautifully written, each character has his or her own voice (frustrating at times, but in the most wonderful way), and the story will send you to tears multiple times.

Oh, hey there

Holy canoli, I realized today that almost all my posts for 2016 have been book reviews. That's not a bad thing, really, but I thought I'd give a quick update on life and writing and everything else that goes with it.

Well, life. Sprint car season has started back up, and the boy is more involved than ever. Even right now, we have a sprint car sitting in our garage, waiting to be worked on. It's gong to be a process, and the payoff isn't certain. The smile that comes to his face whenever he sees it, though, makes it all worth it. I'm also trying to organize schedules around sprint car season, and that's proven easier than I thought. We're going on vacation in about a month and a half, and I'm already preparing for that. Also, do you understand how hard it is to shop for clothes when the weather keeps changing every two seconds? Yeah, that hasn't been fun. I bought shorts and cute t-shirts, and the shorts have been confined to drawers because we had rain, and now it's 90 degrees and I hate global warming.

Also on the life line (*ba dum tiss*), I have eight books on my NetGalley shelf, so I figured I'd buy eight more from Barnes and Noble. I'm doing really well with this whole reading thing. Anyway, expect an inundation of book reviews over the next two weeks, because four of the books on my shelf are coming out soon, and I'm hoping to get reviews our before they're published. Fingers crossed!

What else, what else, what else? Oh! Oliver is doing great. I just took him to the vet this morning for his last check up and now we have to get him to walk five minutes, three times a day. WALK. THREE TIMES A DAY. Hahahahahaha. When I laughed, the vet did, too, so that tells you how Oliver is with exercise. He loves to swim, so the warm weather is good, but who knows how long it's going to last and I'm not getting in a freezing swimming pool with him. I'm not even letting him get in a freezing swimming pool. He wouldn't stand for it, anyway. So, I guess, we'll see how the walking goes. Prediction: IT DOES NOT GO WELL.

But what about this writing that you mentioned, Bree? Well, let me tell you: I've been writing. For reals. Over the last few months, I've been dabbling with a few stories, just adding things here and there to keep me moving, but nothing has stuck. I've been in something of a rut, and I didn't know what to do. Is this it? Have I done all my writing and now my brain is like, nope, not today, not tomorrow, not ever?

Well, no, all I needed was a little inspiration, and it came from a book and, oddly enough, Tumblr.

So I've been writing every day for the last two weeks, and it's become a little routine. It's been nice having something that I know I'm going to do every day, but it's been a pain trying to schedule everything around it. Not being lazy on the weekends would help, but then when am I supposed to be lazy? That's a thought that plagues me every Sunday when I even think about getting out of pajamas to go to the grocery store.

It's madness, I say.

So I don't want to jinx anything, but the writing has been going really well. I'm doing what I've always wanted to do and just write without looking back. I read what I wrote the day before so I know where I'm going, but I'm trying not to edit. That's where it always gets me. I edit during my writing process and then I get discouraged, and it's not pretty. Once I'm finished with the first draft, I'll talk a little more about it, but I don't want to be like THIS IS MY STORY AND I LOVE IT AND THINGS ARE GREAT and then I stop writing.

Give me a few weeks and then I'll make the grand reveal like a magician.

Basically this means that most of my posts are going to be full of book reviews because I don't want to update on my writing for reasons explained above. If you really care to read about how I'm doing with my writing, click on the Tumblr button on the right and I'll do my best to update things there. Also, ducks have come back to our pool, so check out my Instagram for animals and sprint cars and nerdiness and possibly Champions League tears. I'd say depending on if Bayern wins or not, but I'll probably be in tears either way.

Oh, and yes, it's fun being me.

Dreaming of Antigone by Robin Bridges

Wow. Strap yourself down and prepare for some grade A fangirling.

Every star has its own path… 

“I can’t ever be the blazing star that Iris was. I’m still just a cold, dark satellite orbiting a star that went super nova.”
 
Andria’s twin sister, Iris, had adoring friends, a cool boyfriend, a wicked car, and a shelf full of soccer trophies. She had everything, in fact—including a drug problem. Six months after Iris’s death, Andria is trying to keep her grades, her friends, and her family from falling apart. But stargazing and books aren’t enough to ward off her guilt that she—the freak with the scary illness and all-black wardrobe—is still here when Iris isn’t. And then there’s Alex Hammond. The boy Andria blames for Iris’s death. The boy she’s unwittingly started swapping lines of poetry and secrets with, even as she tries to keep hating him.
 
Heartwrenching, smart, and bold, Dreaming of Antigone is a story about the jagged pieces that lie beneath the surface of the most seemingly perfect life…and how they can fit together to make something wholly unexpected.

I can't even put a finger on what I loved most about this book, I just know that I couldn't put it down. I started reading it because it was next on my ever-expanding list of NetGalley books, and I figured it would take me a week or so. Nope, two days later, I was clawing at my Kindle, trying to figure out why the book ended and why there wasn't more hiding somewhere. I couldn't even read the sneak peek of her next book because I knew I would want to read more of it, and that seemed so unfair that I would have to wait for that, too.

Andria and her family are still reeling over the death of her twin sister, Iris. Andria has curled into herself, shunning most friends and only trying to get through the next two weeks without having a seizure so she can get her driver's license. That's not an exaggeration: Andria suffers from epilepsy. But the next two weeks tests everything that Andria has: her grades are slipping, her friends are pushing her to be social, and her sister's ex-boyfriend suddenly comes back from rehab with a new look on life. As Andria's story moves forward, her sister's story unravels, and the entire town is in for a big surprise when everything finally comes to light.

While sitting in bed today thinking about books (because that's what I do), I realized that books that give me the information I need without me even knowing it are my favorite kinds (see: JK Rowling). I guess sometimes I really like feeling like a fool at the end, like I should have seen this coming, if only I had read the sacred text close enough. Robin Bridges lays out the story of Antigone in the early chapters of the book, and I read through it, nodding and thinking, yes, yes, of course, this information is relevant, but not all of it. Well, it ends up that that information was more relevant than I could ever imagine. 

What starts off as a simple (???) story of a terrible tragedy and the ripples it leaves behind, takes a quick left turn into an even more harrowing disaster that affects more people than previously believed. And, really, isn't that the true definition of a Greek tragedy? Everything you know is wrong and to prove that, we're going to through the worst at you? Yep, that's this book. Just when you start getting comfortable and falling in love, Robin Bridges hits you with reality. What was especially interesting was how the other characters reacted, because sometimes little information like that is left out. But this was a bombshell, and everyone had been affected, and Bridges made sure to inform the reader how everyone reacted. It was small, but effective.

I appreciated the poetry that was really at the center of this book. Whitman, Dickinson, Rossetti, all the lines were picked with care and they fit so beautifully in the story. It prepared the reader for what was to come, as well as gave them a peek inside the backstory of these people, one that wouldn't be shared until the end of the book. I love the idea that words written hundreds of years ago bind people together, and can create bonds in the unlikeliest of places.

Oh, hey, did I also mention that there could have been a potentially heart-wrenching scene involving an animal and the author didn't do it? Yeah. I will never be more grateful than when the episode passed without anyone harmed. THANK YOU.

Dreaming of Antigone comes out March 29th, and I'm not kidding here when I say to pre-order it right now. Trust me, have I ever steered you wrong? I'd like to think I have not, so you can definitely trust me.