The Summer of Lost Letters by Hannah Reynolds

When a box of her O'ma's stuff arrives at the house addressed to her mother, Abby Schoenberg, 17, can't resist opening it. Inside, she finds a stack of love letters addressed to her O'ma, Ruth Goldman, living in New York City from someone named Edward living on Nantucket island, and who refuses to send Ruth a necklace she has asked to be returned to her. Not knowing much about her O'ma's past other than that she came alone from Germany as a 4-year-old shortly after Kristallnacht. Now, Abby is determined to discover more about her O'ma's life - who is Edward, why was he writing love letters to her in the 1950s and what happened to the necklace, which her Grandmother obviously never got back. 

After doing some research, Abby discovers the letter writer is Edward Barbanel, who mentions a place called Golden Doors on Nantucket. Luckily, Abby lands a job working in a bookstore on the island, and a room shared with a girl named Jane, with whom she immediately becomes friends. And yes, everyone she meets knows the very wealthy Barbanel family, who are having a party at which Abby is invited to help serve. Naturally, her curiosity overcomes her and she is caught snooping around by Noah Barbanel, 18 and the handsome grandson of Edward. 

To try to keep his family's personal business private and to protect his grandparents, Noah agrees to help Abby with her search to discover more about her O'ma and her family history. O'ma never talked about her parents and all the Schoenberg's knew was that they have perished in Auschwitz, but who they were and where they lived had always been a mystery. 

In between her job at the bookstore and her attempts to discover more about her O'ma, there are parties on the beach, sailing, ice cream and new friends, even Shabbat dinner with the Barbanel family. Abby hadn't been looking forward to this summer with her friends away, but decides to take the advice of best friend Niko who tells her to go crazy, be bold, have some chutzpah. And that is just what Abby does. 

The Summer of Lost Letters is a contemporary romance with some interesting historical fiction and some interesting historical facts throughout the novel and Reynolds has incorporated it all easily into the story. I thought it was interesting how she introduced some of the chapters with Edward's love letters almost as a portend of what is going to happen. I also thought that never getting to know who Ruth Goldman responded to the letters or what she felt was a great way to keep the mystery going. Of course, readers can  surmise her feelings for Edward by the fact of keeping the letters, despite having married another man (whom she did in fact love, too). 

At first the tension and bickering in between getting along really well was kind of fun as Abby and Noah dances around their attraction to each other. But after a certain point, I honestly felt that this could have used some editing when I found myself muttering "oh my God, own it already." Others may find this kind of dance appealing.  

In the end. all is revealed and I never saw it coming - and I really liked that. The end could come across as a little to pat, but that was fine with me. After all, this is a great summer romance to read, enjoy, and learn a few things.

This book is recommend for readers age 12+

This book was an eARC gratefully received from NetGalley

A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus

First they lost their parents and were taken care of by their cold, distant grandmother. Now she's gone, too, it's June 1940 and there's war on. So it's decided that the orphaned but with an nice inheritance Pearce children - William, 12, Edmund, 11, Anna, 9 - would be evacuated from their home in London. The plan is that they will be sent to the countryside with a school they never attended, in the hope that they will find a proper family that wants them, but to not say anything about their inheritance to be sure that they are wanted and not their money. Naturally, the schoolmistress, Miss Carr, resents the three additions to her responsibilities and isn't exactly welcoming, especially when William insists the siblings not be separated and Edmund gets into trouble right off the bat.

Arriving at their destination, the Pearce siblings are passed over until finally the Forresters, a family with two boys William's age, decides to pick them. At first, it seems like a good situation. Anna is given her own room and doted on by Mrs. Forrester, while William and Edmund share a room with Jack and Simon Forrester. But, it turns out that Jack and Simon resent the siblings, bullying William and Edmund at every chance and finally getting Edmund into serious trouble. Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Forrester are convinced their sons can do no wrong. 

Luckily, there's a nice library in the village and soon William, Edmund and Anna begin to go there afternoons after school. All three are big readers, and they find a real welcome when they meet the librarian, Mrs. Müller. Mrs. Müller has her own problems - she is married to a German who went home before the war and there's been no word about him since. Of course, it is assumed by the villagers that he is now a Nazi. Naturally, they ostracize Mrs. Müller and she is considered an unsuitable billet for evacuees. 

Though life is pretty comfortable at the Forrester's, it soon becomes apparent that the billet isn't going to work out for the Pearce sibs and they are placed in a different home. Mrs. Griffith, whose husband of away fighting, is considerably poorer than the Forrester family and is the stressed out mother of four children. The Pearce siblings share an unheated room upstairs with one bed and a chamber pot, so they don't have to use the outhouse in the night. They are also expected to help out with the housework, help care for the children and surrender their ration cards and in return they get to be hungry and cold and get lice.

Luckily, William, Edmund, and Anna still have the warm, cozy library to which they can escape. and the always welcoming Mrs. Müller. Plus, she always has the best book recommendations for them. But when they discover their books, including library books, being torn up to use in the outhouse, they storm out of the Griffith house, determined to not return, and head to the church for warmth and because they are to be in a Christmas pageant that night. Mrs. Müller, who has suspected things weren't going well for the Pearce siblings, takes them home with her that night.

You may think that is the end of the story, but, no, it isn't. 

I just love a good, cozy middle grade novel with just enough tension and frustration to me keep reading and this novel certainly meets that criteria. And the scenes in the library are described with such comfortable coziness, even on a cold day, that I wished I could have joined them. 

William, Edmund, Anna, and Mrs. Müller are fleshed out with their distinct personalities and shared similarities. All four love to read, and there feels like a comfortable quiet sense of companionship in the library scenes that throughout the novel I kept thinking how sad it was they the Pearce children couldn't be billeted with Mrs. Müller. It felt like such a perfect fit compared to the Forresters and Mrs. Griffith. Luckily, the kids are their own best friends, and support each other no matter what. 

I like the way Albus has really captured some of the hardships people faced during WWII. Many evacuees were not welcomed in the towns and villages of the English countryside, and the words "filthy Vakies" graffitied onto a wall in this story pretty much sums it up. Some were only taken in for their ration cards, but still went hungry all the time. And then there is the suspicion many people had at that time towards anything and anyone German, here it is aimed at Mrs. Müller. The only thing missing was the words "fifth column." 

A Place to Hang the Moon is a wonderful choice for readers who like books about the kids who are faced with seemingly impossible challenges of the WWII home front. If you loved The War That Saved My Life as much as I did, this is definitely a book you will enjoy. 

This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was gratefully received from the publisher, Margaret Ferguson Books/Holiday House                                                                                                                             

Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby

This is the story of Francesca "Frankie" Mazza, narrated by Pearl, a teenage ghost who feels just a little bit closer to life when she is around Frankie. Frankie is a 14-year-old Italian American living in an Catholic orphanage run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow in Chicago with her younger sister Toni and her older brother Vito. The Mazza children aren't orphans, but were placed in the Guardian Angels Orphanage by their father, a shoemaker, after the death of their mother. And every visiting Sunday, he showa up bearing meatball sandwiches, spaghetti with butter, a apple for each and sometimes a new pair of shoes. Then one Sunday, he visits with news that he and his new wife would be moving to Colorado, and he would be taking Vito with him, but leaving the girls at the orphanage.

Left behind, and missing Vito, Frankie withdraws into herself for a while, at which point Pearl's story begins to unfold. Pearl is convinced she died as a result of the 1918 influenza pandemic that swept the world. And she has acquired a ghostly fox for company as she roams around the orphanage, the shores of Lake Michigan, reads The Hobbit over the shoulder of a library patron, where Pearl meets Marguerite, an African American ghost who can actually knock books off shelves. Like Frankie and Pearl, Marguerite also has a tragic story and also like them, her story slowly unfolds.

Once Frankie begins to join her friends again, she finds herself working in the kitchen, preparing meals for the nuns. And that's where she meets and falls in love with Sam. And the feeling is mutual. But Sam is almost 18-years-old and once war is declared in Europe, it is just a matter of time until, like Vito, he is drafted and sent to fight Hitler.

When the nuns discover what went on between Frankie and Sam, she is harshly punished, and then she and Toni are kicked out of the orphanage. Living with their father, their stepmother, and three of her children just may be a deal breaker for Frankie.

Thirteen Doorways doesn't just take the reader on a journey through the problematic and tragic lives of Frankie, Pearl, and Marguerite, to their individual ends, it also challenges the reader to think about the doorways we are confronted with in life and what might lie behind them. As events in their lives are recalled, as doorways are opened, wolves are revealed. Do we open the door and go through, not knowing what can happen, but taking control of our lives and our experiences or do we deny ourselves agency, staying ensconced in a life not really lived, however abusive and unhappy it may be?

Ruby has written a novel that is populated by a whole host of characters besides Frankie, Pearl, and Marguerite, who all play a part in their stories to greater or lesser but always relevant degrees. In doing so, to my mind, at least, Ruby just may have redefined the old Henry James' notion of the "loose baggy monster' and given it dignity and literary value.

Though not a book about WWII, it does, nevertheless, frame the world that Frankie lives in and the world that Pearl haunts. And in doing so, Ruby gives the reader some real insight about what life was like during those years, especially for poor Americans.

I began reading Thirteen Doorways slowly, much more slowly than I usually read books, savoring every word. But I found Ruby's writing so beautiful, so lyrical, so mesmerizing that it didn't take long before I realized I couldn't put it down. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for those who like this kind of tale, I can't recommend it highly enough for so many reasons.

This book is recommended for readers age 13+
This book was purchased for my personal library

The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor

In this novel told in alternating voices, one in the present, one is the past, the lives of two teenage girls have interesting parallels. 

No one was more surprised than 16-year-old New Jersey native Alice Prewitt to discover she had inherited an apartment in Paris' 9th Arrondissement from her beloved Gram, Chloe. Surprised because it is an apartment that had oddly never ever been mentioned, not to Alice, nor to Gram's daughter, Alice's mother. And it's not just any apartment, as Alice, her mom and dad discover, but what turns out to be a virtual time capsule of her Gram's family from the 1930s and 1940s. And the surprises don't stop there.

Going through some old photos in the apartment, Alice discovers that her Gram also had a sister named Adalyn Bonhomme that no one knew about. But why had Gram never mentioned a sister or the at-one-time-so-elegant apartment? Returning to the apartment a few days later to do more exploring, Alice is excited to find Adalyn's diary which she had begun on May 30, 1940. Writing about the Nazi occupation of France, Adalyn sounds ready to resist however she can.  But when Alice finds some magazine clippings with happy pictures of Adalyn dressed in high fashion and partying and a newspaper photo to her sitting in an expensive restaurant with six men wearing Nazi armbands, she finds her discoveries hard to process. Could Adalyn have been a Nazi collaborator? 

Yet, the deeper Alice digs into the lives of the Bonhomme family during the war, the clearer a picture of a dysfunctional family emerges. Adalyn and Chloe's father is a WWI veteran who suffers from PTSD, has basically withdrawn from life, and everyone must tiptoe around him so as not to upset him. Their mother is the image of privilege, buying costly rationed items on the black market, and attending society parties. The two sisters are very close, but as Adalyn's wartime resistance activities increase, she worries that Chloe's outspokenness and her distain for the Nazis will jeopardize the family. Meanwhile, she finds herself very attracted to Luc who is the leader of her resistance group, and who doesn't seem to feel the same attraction for Adalyn.

Alice's family is just as dysfunctional. The family tiptoes around Alice's mother's depression.  It's understandable that she would be depressed after just losing her mother, and then discovering the Paris apartment was left to her daughter instead of her, but it's also clear she has been depressed off and on Alice's whole life. I thought her father was kind of passive, content to wait out his wife's depressions, not wanting to upset her and waiting for her to ask for help, which she never does. As Alice says her "family's first language is small talk" so important issues are never addressed. Sadly, he doesn't seem to see what this is doing to Alice. Alice retreats to a cafe to do her family research,where she meets her love interest Paul, a student and aspiring artist. 

I really wanted to like The Paper Girl of Paris more than I did. But I felt there was just too much going on and it began to feel chaotic. I would have loved a story about Adalyn, her family and her resistance work. I really liked all of the historical elements in Adalyn's part of the story and how the diary gives a nice picture of life, which is then expanded in Adalyn's own narration. I think that these two things easily could have been presented without Alice's intervention.

So I'm sorry to say that I could have lived without Alice's story all together. She just wasn't as compelling a character as Adalyn. I thing Alice's story would make a nice novel about a contemporary girl dealing with a passive father and depressed mother. Her character turns the book into something of a mystery that needs solving, but it could have just as easily unfolded with that. I just felt that in The Paper Girl of Paris, she added nothing beyond being a plot device to get to Adalyn's more interesting story and her narration felt intrusive.   

Should you read The Paper Girl of Paris? Yes, if you like historical fiction wrapped in a mystery. 

This book is recommended for readers age 13+

This book was borrowed from the Queens Public Library

The Orphan Band of Springdale by Anne Nesbet

It's 1941 and Augusta "Gusta" Hoopes Neubronner, 11, is on a bus traveling with her French horn from New York City to Springdale, Maine by herself. She wasn't always by herself, but she had to leave her parents for financial reasons and go to live with her grandmother in Maine. Gusta's mother had remained in NYC working. Her German-born father had traveled with her until he had to abruptly get off the bus in Portland, Maine when two men boarded looking for him. Gusta's father is a union organizer, an accused communist, and therefore a wanted man.

To Gusta's surprise, her grandmother, Clementine Hoopes, and her Aunt Marion Hoopes run a small orphanage in their house and were not expecting her. Nevertheless, after reading the letter Gusta's mother sent with her, they welcome her into the house and pretty soon she is assimilated into their daily routine. She quickly becomes friend's with Josie, an orphan already in high school, and her cousin Bess, who lives nearby. Gusta settles in at school as well, but when it is discovered how really nearsighted she is, she is sent to an oculist, Mr. Bertmann, a German immigrant, to have her eyes tested and get a pair of glasses. To pay for them, Gusta will work in his shop a few afternoons a week dusting, helping with his accounts, and taking care of his beloved carrier pigeons.

Gusta also loves playing her French horn, but her grandmother doesn't see the value of music and forbids her to practice at home. Gusta's Aunt Marion has always won a blue ribbon for her jam at the county fair, something her grandmother brags about often. Josie suggests the three friends form a band and enter the Blue-Ribbon Band competition at the county fair next summer, hoping to win and change Gusta's grandmother's mind about music, it is an idea met with enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, Josie introduces Gusta to the high school music teacher, Miss Kendall. Miss Kendall is impressed enough with her playing to let Gusta join the high school orchestra. Miss Kendall also takes a real interest in Gusta's French horn, recognizing its value immediately. She is also the sister of Fred Kendall, owner of Kendall Mills, a man who treats the Hoopes women with contempt.

Gusta, who knows something about union organizing, decides to help her Uncle Charlie. He had been injured in at work accident at Kendall Mills and is not longer able to work unless he has an operation the family can't afford. Gusta invites a labor organizer to Springdale to organize the Kendall family's factory and hopefully get some compensation for Uncle Charlie.

And then there is the war in Europe. Though the United States is still not in the war yet, patriotism is running high in Springdale. A new airfield is about to open and the Springdale Aviation Committee is sponsoring a contest for the best patriotic essay on the theme "A Vision of American on High." And snooty classmate Molly Gowen is starting a Real Americans Club with the help of the Women's Patriotic Society of Springdale and she's made it clear that Gusta is not qualified to join because of her German father. Nor does all this misplaced patriotism bode well for Mr. Bertmann and his carrier pigeons, as you can imagine.

Oh yes, there is also a magic wish that threads through this story, an belief that Gusta holds on to tightly in her new living situation.

I had a little trouble getting into The Orphan Band of Springdale at first, but once I did, I couldn't put it down. And I won't kid you, this is a big book - 448 pages long - and I know it looks like there's a lot is going on in it, and that's probably because a lot is going on. But eventually it all comes together and long hidden truths are exposed, including a family secret in the Hoopes household that will leave you gobsmacked.

Gusta is a very likable character, well developed and with an wonderful internal dialogue that really lets her personality shine through. She is also a girl with a well-developed moral compass, thanks to her parents, and alway just wants to do the right thing. And it is through her goodness that the hidden secrets and nativist patriotic agendas are ultimately exposed and truth is illuminated. Hence, Gusta's new glasses serve as a metaphor for events in the novel or as her father described it "the way the sun catches things out against the darkness of a coming storm: "the clear light of trouble." (pg 29)

The Orphan Band of Springdale is a thoroughly satisfying novel, with a kind of comforting heartwarming old fashioned sensibility as it explores themes of family, truth, misplaced patriotism, otherness, and, finally, forgiveness. The book I had trouble getting into turned out to be just that book I wanted to read.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
Thank you to Candlewick Press for providing me with a copy of this book.