Poland, 1944. After the Soviet liberation of Lwów from Germany, the city remains a battleground between resistance fighters and insurgent armies, its loyalties torn between Poland and Ukraine.
Seventeen-year-old Tolya Korolenko is half Ukrainian, half Polish, and he joined the Soviet Red Army to keep himself alive and fed. When he not-quite-accidentally shoots his unit’s political officer in the street, he’s rescued by a squad of Ukrainian freedom fighters. They might have saved him, but Tolya doesn’t trust them. He especially doesn’t trust Solovey, the squad’s war-scarred young leader, who has plenty of secrets of his own.
Then a betrayal sends them both on the run. And in a city where loyalty comes second to self-preservation, a traitor can be an enemy or a savior—or sometimes both.
I received an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
This was a really interesting historical fiction with thriller elements thrown in. It was definitely a fast paced and easy read, it kept me turning the pages, and I was intrigued by the overall plot. It was a very intricate book and a few of the twists got me. You can feel the author’s passion for history, and the amount of research that she did is absolutely evident.
That being said, I did find it a smidge difficult to keep track of the characters, their loyalties and the shifting POVs. The book follows two different characters at two different points in history. While an interesting concept, it was executed in a way that made things more complicated to track than they needed to be. There were also a fair number of side characters all with differently loyalties, and there was so much betrayal that I did find myself having to reread a few passages to make sure that I was keeping up with everything.
As The Book Ends 