Wow! so many twists and turns in the story that you won't know what has actually happened until the very end. This is one you can't put down. ( )

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The Road Beyond Ruin by Gemma Liviero is a novel story taking place in Germany, right after World War II. Ms. Liviero is a published author living in Australia.

Stefano is an Italian POW who is walking home through Germany after the war. He finds a young child next to his dead mother and takes the boy with him.

Stefano encounters Erich, a former German soldier who invites him to stay until he can safely continue on his way. Erich’s neighbors are Rosalind and Georg, who suffer from PTSD. Stefano finds letters from Monique, who went missing during the war, which tell of a darker side to the family.

This book is not about the war, per se, but mostly about life immediately after World War II in Germany, and its effects. The setting and story are very creative, and the whole narrative turned 180 degrees from what I thought it would be.

The research in The Road Beyond Ruin by Gemma Liviero is very good, like Broken Angels by the same author which I previously read. The complexities of life in a country that is under occupation and destroyed are described well.

The story, however, is somewhat disjointed, even though I got the gist of it. In the end, I felt it was rushed and jumbled. The transitions within the book are done without rhyme or reason, they simply don’t flow. A new character introduced at one point, is not being visited again much later.

The book is a slow burner, the author takes her time telling the story. The reader discovers little bits about each character in every chapter, but between the lines, I could tell there’s always more.

This is a story with many layers, brutal and naked, which had several twists I did not see coming. There are many themes, consequences of choices made, secrets, and good intentions gone awry.
And revenge, let’s not forget that.

As I said before, the last quarter of the book was rushed but I did understand what the author was conveying. It is a well-written book though, and well worth reading. ( )

The Road Beyond Ruin tells the kind of story I usually like: war setting, lots of plot twists, suspenseful throughout, and realistic. Despite all of this, I have to admit that I did not finish it. It became too ponderous, too full of characters and events from the past, and too many switches in its timeframe--one minute it is this year, the next minute it is a different year, place, and setting.
After reading 76% of the book, I found myself wanting too much to read the other books I had already started and was also anxious to start another book. Perhaps I should not be reading several books simultaneously, and I would be better able to keep my focus on the one I am reading, but I like to have a book of fiction, a book of non-fiction, and one audiobook going simultaneously and I am unlikely to stop that practice. In this case, I had the ebook version of The Road Beyond Ruin, but the audio version accompanied it, and this review refers to my experience with the audio version.
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I only rated this 3 stars due to its non-linear telling. At times it was hard to tell exactly where the action was in spite of the fact that months and dates are given for various chapters as well as from whose perspective. In the present Stefano, a former Italian underground fighter, is seen apparently walking home to southern Italy after WWII. He finds Michel, a five-year-old, at the side of the road with his dead mother and baby brother, and takes him along with the idea of trying to find a family to take him in. Things are so bad, his quest is not successful, so Michel continues on with him to two houses near a river. One is empty so they bed down for the night. In the morning, Erich Steiner shows up with a promise to help him get back home. Now the intrigue begins with Rosalind and Georg next door and stories of their childhood in these two houses along with Monique, a parent less cousin. In the past the three become fast friends, but Rosalind is jealous of her relationship with Georg. Enter Erich, who Georg brings home as a friend. When Hitler takes power, Georg enlists in the German Army and Erich becomes part of the Gastopo, interrogating possible Jews and people who want to overthrow Hitler as well as coordinating the removal of the Jews and other undesirables. He eventually marries Monique. In the present, Georg is on drugs to make him sleep and drugs to make him be awake. He is not lucid most of the time and can be very dangerous. Rosalind is his wife and a nurse who is trying to take care of him with the help of Erich. All main characters are much more than they seem. ( )

There is much to like about this novel--the period just as WWI is ending in Germany and Italy and the soldiers, spies and citizens all struggle to recover from their new realities. I struggled a bit with the structure of moving between characters and past/present from chapter to chapter. I do think it would have been even more compelling and effective with a more traditional approach to the storytelling. But I still recommend the book if you are interested in this era. ( )