Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm a great fan of historical fiction, especially when the background description is factual. The synopsis piqued my interest because I have family ties to Krakow and Warsaw, and immediate family that experienced the horrors of the time. Yet, as someone who listened to WWII stories in the post-war era from survivors, I can only say that the book failed to take me in. The story never gained depth; the characters remained one-dimensional; climatic moments were so superficially described that I was unable to relate the narrative to the deep emotions I experienced when I listened to my family and their friends in the decade after WWII ended. There is none of the alchemy that makes a book so engaging that you feel a loss when you finish reading. Yes, the affair between Rita and Tadeusz is necessary for plot development, but as narrated, she comes across as a slut with no conscience and he is an opportunist with few moral scruples. When Rita decides to send her child to her parents with a stranger, a gut-wrenching decision many parents made at that time, the narrative was so casual that I felt all the emotion of posting a letter. The ending was lamentablypredictable. This book is not even a good read for its technical craft: the use of foreign words is at best inaccurate, at worst--and there were many such instances--downright faulty, bringing the authority of the writer into question. Don't waste your time!