"Lilac Girls" by Martha Hall Kelly

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Lilac Girls" and I got off to a rocky start. I got a few chapters in and the subject matter of one of the story lines was so difficult that I was having an extremely hard time with it and almost quit reading it. I have so many books on my "To Be Read" list that I couldn't get behind spending the next week or so on a story that showed first hand the darkest sides of the war and of humanity. I spoke to a friend that had already finished the book and she encouraged me to keep going. I dove back in and skipped the few pages that I was hung up on and continued on and fell in love with it. There are 3 story lines: 1) Caroline is based on a real person that lived in New York and worked tirelessly to send supplies to French children orphaned during the war as well as to help the Rabbits (a group of Polish women that were experimented on while in a concentration camp). 2) Kasia is a young Polish woman who is sent to Ravensbruck, a notorious concentration camp and 3) Herta who is also based on a real person who was a German doctor at Ravensbruck. While the subject matter is obviously difficult, once I got past that one section I found each story line to be engrossing and not as heavy as "The Nightingale" and "All the Light We Cannot See".