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“Her beauty saved her life – and condemned her.
Cilka is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, in 1942. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival.
After liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to Siberia. But what choice did she have? And where did the lines of morality lie for Cilka, who was sent to Auschwitz when still a child?
In a Siberian prison camp, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, including the unwanted attention of the guards. But when she makes an impression on a woman doctor, Cilka is taken under her wing. Cilka begins to tend to the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under brutal conditions.
Cilka finds endless resources within herself as she daily confronts death and faces terror. And when she nurses a man called Ivan, Cilka finds that despite everything that has happened to her, there is room in her heart for love.”
I got an ARC of this book.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first book due to some of the controversies that have come up since it was published. When I heard there was going to be a sequel it called to me like a siren. I knew I was going to regret it, but I couldn’t stop myself. I needed to see what would happen and see if maybe my issues would be addressed.
Well, my issues were addressed, but in this way that said that my issues did not matter at all. The further I read into this book, the more it felt like a cash cow situation. There are flashbacks to the other story she told. Yet most of the flashbacks just felt like they were forced into the story to explain what was currently happening so real writing skill wasn’t required. I do have to admit that Morris has improved since the last book. This book actually read like a book. There were clear jumps in time. It was just a better book technically over all. Everything else is worse.
I really can’t think of anything nice to say about this book. By the end I was reading it just to see how much worse everything could get. This story at least felt more believable, but that is also because I know a lot less about the prison camps of Russia. So she could have done absolutely no research and it still would have felt more believable than her first book. I am concerned, seeing how the first book went, that this book is also filled with things that are drastically untrue and fly in the face of thousands of other accounts of what happened, but this time I have no proof so I am going to just enjoy it as the story instead of being any form of reality. Not having to go “wait a second” every few pages, because of history issues was nice. The story flowed better, but it still wasn’t what I would call an enjoyable read. There was no character development. There were very few feelings. It was just “Cilka did this” and “this happened to Cilka”. I wanted it to be more fleshed out. Considering Morris admits some of the characters are 100% made up, I was hoping for more fleshed out characters. There were no fully fleshed out characters. Every character was clearly good or bad. Everyone was run by one character trait.
The love plot is so basic and dull. They fall in love from a distance. Cilka is in love before she even meets him. There is no reason why the relationship would have been one to root for. The only thing I can see bonding them together is trauma. This probably would have been addressed with more fleshed out characters. If the characters felt real, then maybe emotions would have been possible.
At one point, while I was reading I got this feeling that Morris thought, “How can I make the Holocaust sadder? More rape on page!” and so this book was created.
1 out of 5 stars. I would not recommend this book.
You can buy the book here.
~Isaiah
MI Book Reviews 