Thank you to HarperCollins, William Morrow and Company, and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reader copy (ARC) of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Viv is a grieving widow and advocate of the Armed Services Edition, a program that sends books to American soldiers oversees (and is currently being threatened by legislation cracking down on censorship). Hannah is a Jewish activist and librarian who fled Berlin after she was betrayed by someone close to her. Althea is a young American author whose rapid rise to fame earned her a trip to Berlin as part of a cultural program… sponsored by the Nazi party.
Told through 3 timelines and perspectives throughout the 1930s and 40s, The Librarian of Burned Books is a story about overcoming cynicism after personal hardships, protecting the power of knowledge, and learning how to stand up for what is right even when you’re afraid no one will stand with you. 🕯️
I’m a sucker for historical fiction, so when I saw that this book was not only queer historical fiction, but sapphic historical fiction with a happy ending… I mean, how could I not pick it up?! 😍
Out of the main characters, Viv was definitely my favorite perspective to read from because I felt like her goals and motivations were fleshed out well. I never got a really clear idea of Hannah’s personality, and I found Althea’s point of view to be a bit self-centered and passive, but overall I really enjoyed the changing timelines and seeing how their storylines tied together. The ending felt well-deserved 🤧.
There were quite a few moments where the themes of the book made me pause and just hug it to my chest because they were so powerful. 💓 It touches on a lot of very heavy topics in a way that made me regain faith in humanity and kind of fall in love with reading again! 📖
Things I liked ✅
Things I disliked ❌
The pen might be able to destroy a nation eventually, but by the time it did, how many bodies would the sword have claimed? … Did bravery actually exist in real life, or was it just for fairy tales?
It had been such a long war, so many years of hardship, of sacrifice, of fear and loss and pain and the dull monotony of helplessness. But none of that had crushed them completely. Even in the darkest days, in their deepest grief, at their most exhausted, humans found a way to create moments that were so fundamentally hopeful that they couldn’t help but inspire you to take one more step forward. And then one more.