The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest—and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything.

Inspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds, and suffused with the journey-from-the-wilderness elements that made Where the Crawdads Sing a worldwide phenomenon, The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel.

Unique, enthralling and heart wrenching at times, The Forest of Vanishing Stars tells the story of Yona and her journey from being alone, surviving in the forest, to finding new people who she does not know if she can trust.
Kristin Harmel was a beautiful and captivating style that makes you keep reading and really helps you connect with the characters. I deeply enjoyed reading this book, and I felt it was a bit different from her other books, maybe because it develops in the wilderness. Nevertheless, it was good to know about this side of history that I had not read before.
The characters are complex and of course, given the development of the story, we get to see them in extreme conditions. I still did not like all of them but I did like the main characters like Yona and Zus.
However, the pace of the book was a little inconsistent in my opinion. Sometimes it was a bit slow. I still liked the story, though. It is very detailed, seems to be well researched and I am not the one to say it makes justice to real history, but I do believe it could. It is stories like this that people should know about for they help us see light in the darkness. That is pretty much what the story is about.

DRC thanks to Netgalley and Publisher

View all my reviews