I enjoyed Island of Secrets by this author so bought this one expecting much more. I thought it began okay even though the formatting tended to slow the read somewhat and some of the characters began to grate on me. I was aware that it was based on historical events which I began to have doubts about as the author personalised the various characters. It wasn't hard to guess what the rift was between Rebecca and her family. I couldn't reconcile Dora's role with the resistence (i.e. killing) with her naivety in accepting the fate of her family and why she thought sabotaging food would help to get them back.
Towards the end I hit a huge patch of over-sentimentalised repetition and lost all belief in the main character Pandora Cohen and her relationships with many of the other characters. There were so many missed opportunities to make it true to life, to make the characters seem like real people. It felt like I was watching a pantomime or a different version of Les Miserables and it did have some singing at the end! The ending was really not conceivable!
Towards the end I hit a huge patch of over-sentimentalised repetition and lost all belief in the main character Pandora Cohen and her relationships with many of the other characters. There were so many missed opportunities to make it true to life, to make the characters seem like real people. It felt like I was watching a pantomime or a different version of Les Miserables and it did have some singing at the end! The ending was really not conceivable!