A page turner

This novel hits you right in your emotions. I highly recommend it, but make sure you set aside time to read it. ( )

Might be the worst book I have ever listened to ( )

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
This was an infuriating book. The concept was fascinating; but it contains a central plot hole that is so huge, and bothered me so much, that I forced myself to finish just to see if the author explained it somehow. He did not.

The story focuses on Christopher and Rebecca, who have known each other since their childhood growing up on an island off the coast of England. He is German, she is Jewish. Besides the plot hole mentioned, the love story between them lacked heat and didn�Ûªt provide the emotional core needed.

These two main characters continually act in ways that threaten not just their own best interests, but their survival. As the Nazi occupation spreads toward them, Rebecca refuses to leave for a safer location to wait out the war, as Christopher keeps asking her to do. Christopher and his father, as German nationals, are pressed into service for the Fatherland when the takeover finally comes. With this cover, they are able to keep Rebecca hidden - until she idiotically takes it upon herself to march down to Nazi headquarters and register as a Jew, putting both herself and her protectors in danger. She is quickly deported.

Christopher is devastated by the loss of the love of his life. He and his father are at least suspected to have hidden a Jew, and although they lose their assignments they are not punished more harshly, which doesn‰Ûªt ring true based on what we know of Hitler‰Ûªs regime. But even more incredible, when we next meet Christopher, he has somehow risen through the Nazi ranks and scored a plumb assignment at the Auschwitz concentration camp. His plan is to find Rebecca and bring her to Auschwitz so he can save her.

It would seem to be obvious to absolutely EVERYONE in the world except for Christopher, that he needed to make sure he had lots and lots of allies within the extremely corruptible walls of Auschwitz. He was put in charge of ‰ÛÏCanada,‰Û the part of the camp responsible for receiving the inmates and collecting all valuable, which put him in an ideal position to bribe and grease all the palms that would be needed for his audacious plot to have any chance of success.

This is where the huge plot hole I mention comes in. Instead, of capitalizing on this golden opportunity, he soon notices that everyone in camp is skimming off their share of the loot. So he establishes strict new procedures and organizes raids to weed out all the cheating. Why for the love of God would Christopher do this? It turns everyone in the camp into his mortal enemy and ensures that every other SS officer was watching him like a hawk, out to get him in any way possible. Besides dooming his plan to save Rebecca, this fatal miscalculation on his part directly led to the death of the little girl, Anka, who had miraculously survived the gas chamber and was being hidden by the inmates. In the larger sense, why should he care if the guards were taking money? All that Christopher accomplished was to ensure that MORE money would get to Hitler, thus potentially prolonging the war he hated This enormous void of logic made the book, in my opinion, a complete failure. ( )

A page turner

This novel hits you right in your emotions. I highly recommend it, but make sure you set aside time to read it. ( )

I liked Finding Rebecca by Eion Dempsey but did not love it. I have read many nonfiction books about the Holocaust and this is the first fictional one. Christopher is living on the British island of Jersey and is only six years old . His father brought his family there to escape the political climate in Germany, Christopher found a girl who was running away from her abusive mother and father, and she remans with her family but spends time with him and his family while growing up. At the age of fifteen, her father beat her again and she vowed to leave. Her father makes a plan to get her to London without telling his son. Later, Christopher's uncle comes for a visit and he accidently overhears about that her father had taken her to London. Jumping forward in the story, Christopher in an effort to find Rebecca joins the Nazis and works in Auschwitz with his accounting background in the area where the possessions are the Jews are sorted and it was determined what to would become of them.

The book is well researched but I am not big fan if romance and did not like the way that it was handled in the book. Many of the events there fictional seemed improbable to me. The author needed to refrain from mentioning over and over again how seeing the prisoners made him sick to his stomach. Where the author stuck to the historical research he was fine. But some of the fictional story did not feel genuine. And I think that the ending could have been skipped. The twist at the end was not needed. I think that the author needs try writing non-fiction. ( )