The Light After The War - Anita Abriel

I really, really wanted to like this book. I kept reading with the hope that I would enjoy it more as I got into it, and I was so disappointed in the end when I didn’t. Disappointed because I feel that the story had so much potential, but just didn’t live up to it.

Vera and Edith are two Hungarian Jewish women from Budapest who survived the war after Vera’s mother pushes them to safety from cattle cars bound for Auschwitz. The best friends survive by hiding on an Austrian farm, and end up in Naples after the war, and then Caracas, searching to find ways to keep living their lives despite everything they have lost.

My main issue with this book is that I felt like I was reading a light romance novel, where all the characters are flat and undeveloped, with simple, and completely predictable plot lines. Vera is too serious, Edith too frivolous (so much so that she is completely unbelievable, especially after all she has been through), one character too jealous, another too stubborn, etc etc. From what I have read the author was inspired by her own mother’s experiences during and after the war, and this is why I wanted to read the story in the first place. But there is so much depth lacking from the narrative that I couldn’t invest myself in any of the characters or the plot. Even the predictability would have been OK if there had just been more depth and feeling.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.