*Top Ten Tuesday* Book Recommendations for WWII Fiction Fans

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Joood - Hooligan of Platypire reviews bossed me into doing this, so I guess this is a thing I do now. 

This weeks theme is book recommendations for WWII era fiction fans. I have always had a morbid fascination with the Holocaust so I have read loads of books about the Jewish ghettos and the concentration camps. But I have somewhat recently branched out to start reading just about any book set in Europe during WWII that I can get my hands on. If you are a fan of WWII era historical fiction, you have likely already read a few of these yourself. These books are in no particular order.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. My book club read this and it's one of the few books I actually almost finished before our meeting. This tale is set in Saint-Malo, a walled citadel in France, and also in Germany. We get to hear the story from a few different points of view, and I believe this is the first book I read where I actually sympathized with a Nazi soldier to some degree (and he kind of earned the sympathy with his actions).

The Lost Letter by Jillian Cantor. I only just recently finished reading this book. It's told from two points of view in two different time periods, the 1930s and early 40s and then in 1989-90, right around the time the Berlin Wall came down. It focuses on members of the resistance in Austria in the build up to WWII, when Hitler was just starting to round up Europe's Jewish citizens, and then a woman with a strange stamp/letter that was never in circulation, but it's darn close to one that was. The mystery of the story is just how did the stamp come about, and what happened to the engraver responsible for it, but there is also a bit of romance to the tale.

The Velvet Hours by Alyson Richman. This story is told from two different points of view in two different time periods. It follows a woman and her biological grandmother in the time leading up to WWI and the time leading up to WWII. I found the grandmother's story to be more entertaining on the surface, but the woman's life caused me more anxiety because she was half-Jewish, and even though she was raised Catholic (I think), we all know that wouldn't have mattered to the Nazis. I thought this was a unique perspective on the two great wars.

Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford. This book is set about fifteen years before the beginning of WWII, but there is a conspiracy involved in the story that relates directly to the rise of the Nazi party, so I really feel like it's connected. Set in England, Radio Girls chronicles the early days of the BBC and had a bit of an Agent Carter feeling to it to me. There were times where the story dragged on, but ultimately I found it fascinating.

The Girl From the Paradise Ballroom by Alison Love. This book doesn't discuss WWII much, but rather frames it. We see London in the time leading up to WWII, and then immediately afterwards, with just a brief mention of the war itself. What intrigued me most about this story is that it follows Italians in London, some of them fascists, and the way they were treated in the time leading up to the war. I saw a lot of parallels to the current treatment of Muslims and refugees in America, reminding me that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly. I think this is the only WWII era historical fiction that I've read recently with a concentration camp setting. The story rotates through three points of view and is told a bit like a soap opera, where once things start to get a little exciting for one of our characters, we switch to someone else's POV, which kept me glued to the book wanting to know what was going to happen. This book provided a diverse experience of WWII and camp life, even if I had difficult relating to one of the characters.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. This was another book club pick that I had almost finished before our monthly meeting. This is another dual point of view tale, following two sisters in France during the war. The two sisters lead very different lives, each with their own priorities. This story made it a bit easier to understand why there was not as much resistance to occupation from every day citizens as I would have thought there'd be. If I had to recommend just one book from this list for everyone to read, it would probably be this one.

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck. This book gets an honorable mention on this list because I haven't finished reading it yet, but what I have read, I've loved so far. (And to be quite honest, I needed another book for the aesthetics of this post.)

So my list only has eight books on it, not ten (for once I didn't go overboard!) but these are the books I've read recently enough that their plots are still stuck with me. And looking at my list, with the exception of The Girl from the Paradise Ballroom, all of these books feature strong or brave female characters as at least one of the main points of view for the story.

Do you have any books you would add to my list? I'm always looking for recommendations of good WWII era historical fiction books to read. - Katie