The story is set in Poland near the beginning of the war. Emma, a young Jewish girl, newly married, finds her life thrown into turmoil when her husband, Jacob, disappears to join the Resistance soon after the Nazis invade. Returning to her parent’s, she discovers that they and her entire community have been rounded up and put into the Ghetto. In despair, she goes to join them, wondering whether she will ever see Jacob again.

In the Ghetto she soon makes contact with more members of the Resistance who manage to get her out. As she is blonde-haired and blue-eyed, she begins to lead a double life as a Catholic girl from Gdansk, staying with Jacob’s Catholic aunt and a little boy who has also been rescued from the Ghetto. However, soon after the beginning of her dangerous double-life, the Kommandant of the town comes to the house she is living in for dinner. He is immediately taken by her and asks her to come and work for him. A romance ensues and Emma, now called Anna, finds herself torn between her love for her husband and her work for the Resistance, and her growing affection for the Nazi.

The story sounds good. Unfortunately the execution of it wasn’t as good. For some reason, I simply didn’t find the characters believable. Emma/Anna was so naive that I wanted to smack her at times. I honestly couldn’t believe that someone in such a situation could be so careless. For instance, she starts work at the Kommandant’s office and the minute she walks in, she is given instructions to open the mail, but to NOT open anything marked Confidential. Within minutes she is thinking ‘this is marked confidential. It might have something in it I can give to the Resistance. Let’s open it’. Sure enough, in walks the Kommandant and his aide just as she is doing it. Honestly, wouldn’t you at least wait until you knew his movements and knew whether it was safe to take such a risk? Clearly not. Similarly, her endless ‘moral battles’ with herself coupled with her apparent lack of regard for caution as she blurts out demands to know about her husband in public places started to get on my nerves. OK, she might have been naive. But under circumstances like that, knowing that your life, the lives of the people you are talking to and the lives of people you love are at stake, wouldn’t you try to exercise a little more discretion?

I found the growing romance between her and the Kommandant slightly odd. Love at first sight, perhaps, but it did seem a little false to me. And the finale was also odd. The kind of back and forth about the feelings of both of the main characters just didn’t ring true to me. It’s not that I thought it couldn’t happen like that. It was more that it felt like it had all been written in for dramatic effect and as a result, the lead characters became like the kind of cariacatures that you get when you read Mills & Boon novels. I have to say I was disappointed. I had expected a lot more from this book and it just didn’t seem to deliver.

Rating: 6/10
ISBN: 978-1-741-16500-5
Publisher: Mira Books
Year: 2007
Date Finished: 17 December 2008
Pages: 395

I was due to review this book yesterday for Cyndia Depre’s online book tour and, for the first time I am a day late Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the post, my copy of the book never arrived and although I ordered it off Amazon more than 10 days ago, it actually landed in my hand on Tuesday.  Yep, that’s two days ago. So I had spent the last two days madly reading Oblivious so I could get my review posted and not disrupt the book tour too much.

Fortunately, the book isn’t a tough one to get through. On the contrary, it is a rollicking murder-mystery come romance which moves along at a good pace and encourages you to keep turning pages. The book introduces you to Olivia, previously named January Eighth until her parents saw sense a couple of days after her birth and renamed. She is a whirlwind, ranging from completely oblivious to the outside world through to having a canny understanding about the people around her. She is a popular girl-from-a-small-town turned super sleuth, and it is from her that the title of the book arises.

At her parents Christmas party, she meets “Marlboro Man” Tucker who is at the party with another woman. The next morning, that woman is found dead in her house and thus begins Olivia’s mission to solve the crime along with the new man soon to be in her life, Tucker and her best friend and ex-model Josie.

The story is told predominantly in dialogue which is what keeps it moving. There is a cast of characters (some with very unusual names, although perhaps that is small town America?) all of whom know, love and ‘put up with’ Olivia. Olivia is a force unto herself. Her continual habit of mixing metaphors and completely missing what other people are saying apparently belies an intelligence which drives her to solve the case, irrespective of whether the police wanted her input or not! Tucker, new to the town, simply has to keep up with her – something which he doesn’t always find easy to do. The romantic side of the novel comes through these two – his manly protectiveness over her, and her realisation that it is her whom Tucker wants rather than her blonde, svelte best friend.

The only real difficulty I had with the book was a personal one. For some reason, I felt completely removed from the characters. I couldn’t empathise with them and I will be honest and say that Olivia exasperated me more often than not. Although I get the sense that this is exactly what the author was trying to do and in that respect she succeeded very well. The problem was, although she seemed flawed on the surface, the impression I got was that Olivia was perfect – almost too perfect. I have found difficulties in the past with books where the hero or heroine is so perfect that there is no way I could live up to them. They take me back to being bullied by the ‘popular’ and ‘beautiful’ and ‘rich’ girls in the school when I was a child. I couldn’t shake the feeling that because Olivia and Josie fell into this category, then they were people I don’t think I could ever really relate to. Amazing how childhood experiences affect our adult lives, isn’t it!?

Despite the disquieting feeling of not really relating to the characters, I still found this an enjoyable, light and fun read. It’s perfect for the morning and evening commuter train where you need something to make you forget that you are crammed into a busy train with the rain beating down on the windows, and place you in a world where everyone loves everyone else, the lines between good and bad are clearly defined and there really are happy endings.

I was asked to read and review Copper Fire by Suzanne Woods Fisher as part of her virtual book tour. This book, as I understood, was a sequel to Suzanne’s earlier novel, Copper Star where we were first introduced to Louisa – one time resistance fighter in Germany during the Second World War – now settled with her new husband and his son in Copper Springs, Arizona. Copper Fire finds Louisa content in her new life until she receives word that her cousin, Elisabeth, is currently alone in a Red Cross camp in Germany and Louisa determines to go and fetch her and bring her back to America.

I found the book very compelling. Even without having read the first instalment, Suzanne made a point to re-craft the characters with care and detail so I never once felt I had missed anything. I took to Louisa quickly, liking her strength and determination in a small town where many of the residents simply had no understanding of what had gone on during the war and what people like Louisa had experienced. It was the kind of book that I found myself thinking ‘I wonder what is going to happen next?’ when I was away from it which meant it was easy to go back to. I do tend to finish books very quickly when I get going (it is generally an indicator of how much I am enjoying it), and this one I had finished within two days of starting it.

I was very surprised that the majority of the story occurred in Copper Springs as I had fully expected it to occur in Germany, but it allowed the characters in the town to develop and a real picture of Louisa’s new life (as opposed to her old life) be drawn. I also found the treatment of the Holocaust and the difficulties anyone who had lived through it were bound to suffer was delicate, honest and well researched. It isn’t often that the aftermath of the war is written into a novel and so it was really good to read about it from a different perspective.

I had expected the underlying religious theme to be more prominent but I was pleasantly surprised that Suzanne didn’t labour the point and as a result didn’t alienate non-Christian readers like myself. It can be difficult when a writer has a passion for something and that then dominates their writing which results in making anyone who doesn’t share that passion feel like they shouldn’t be reading the book. I am pleased to say that Suzanne didn’t do that and as a result I felt like she had considered all readers, no matter what their faith.

The only small criticisms I had were related to a couple of events in the book which didn’t seem to go anywhere and didn’t carry the story forward short of developing the characters a little more. I wondered about incidents such as the argument over Louisa’s pregnancy (sorry for the spoiler) and so was surprised when it didn’t really have an impact on the plot. Rather they felt like snapshots of life, which of course have their own merits, but Suzanne’s plot was very good as it was so I wasn’t sure they were so necessary.

The other minor criticism was I was a little disappointed with the ending – for a book which was so beautifully researched and so fantastically believable, it seemed just a little far fetched. However, I wouldn’t want that to detract from the fact that I enjoyed the book throughout and was really honoured to be asked to review it.

ISBN: 978-0-9815592-0-9
Publisher: Vintage Inspirations
Year: 2008
Date Finished: 28 July 2008
Pages: 289
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