Lilac Girls (Woolsey-Ferriday, #1) in Crazy Challenge Connection

Jul 13, 2018 Book Concierge rated it liked it

Shelves: audio, book-club, historical-fiction, france, concierge, strong-women, world-war-ii, library, germany

Audiobook performed by Cassandra Campbell (Caroline), Kathleen Gati (Kasia)and Kathrin Kana (Herta)
3.5***

Using three different narrators, the novel tells the WW2 story of the women prisoners held at the notorious Nazi prison camp Ravensbrück. Kelly used two real-life women: Caroline Ferriday, a New York socialite and Broadway actress, and Dr. Herta Oberheuser, a German physician who became the only female surgeon operating at the prison camp. The third narrator is Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teen Audiobook performed by Cassandra Campbell (Caroline), Kathleen Gati (Kasia)and Kathrin Kana (Herta)
3.5***

Using three different narrators, the novel tells the WW2 story of the women prisoners held at the notorious Nazi prison camp Ravensbrück. Kelly used two real-life women: Caroline Ferriday, a New York socialite and Broadway actress, and Dr. Herta Oberheuser, a German physician who became the only female surgeon operating at the prison camp. The third narrator is Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager who is sent to the camp along with her sister, mother, and several friends after her work in the Resistance is discovered. In the author’s note at the end of the novel, Kelly states that she Kasia and her sister, Zuzanna, are loosely based on Nina Iwanska and her sister Krystyna, who were both operated on at Ravensbrück. She further populates the novel with a variety of fictional and real characters supporting these three central figures.

I was most interested in the scenes that take place at Ravensbrück. I knew some of the story of this horrible place and the “experimental surgeries” performed on the women there, but Kelly made it personal and vivid. I also really like how she explored the PTSD (though it wasn’t called that then) suffered by Kasia and Zuzanna and the other “Rabbits” in the years following their release from Ravensbrück.

As for Caroline’s love story with Paul Rodier – it is completely fabricated. I understand why Kelly did this– she was trying to make Caroline more real and to give her a stronger connection to France and what happened in that country during WW2 – but I thought it was a distraction from the central plot. If I were her editor I would have cut it.

I also thought that of the three women, we learned the least about Herta Oberheuser. She was the only woman tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. I wish that Kelly has spent a bit more time fleshing out her character.

All told, this is a good historical fiction debut about a fascinating and important, but less-well-known, episode of WW2. I would read another book by Kelly.

Cassandra Campbell (Caroline), Kathleen Gati (Kasia)and Kathrin Kana (Herta) do a marvelous job narrating the audiobook. Using a different voice artist for each narrator really helped to keep the stories straight.
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Oct 08, 2016 Stacy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: e-books, historical-fiction, five-stars, read-in-2016

As far as I'm concerned, this book far eclipsed some of the other recent books about World War II. (The Nightingale, All The Light We Cannot See, The Storyteller)

It's told from the viewpoint of three different women. Caroline's story didn't seem as compelling to me, but as I read the book, the importance of Caroline becomes apparent.

I didn't realize that some of the characters in this book were either real people or based on real people. It makes the events described as taking place at Ravensbru ...more

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Jul 03, 2019 Kayla rated it really liked it

Shelves: x2019

This book was good. The first half of the book was rough for me to get through. I thought of giving up many times because it broke my heart that these thing during the Holocaust happened. The second half of the book was a bit easier but I loved how things turned out but I still have some unanswered questions. Lol

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