A review by aingealwroth
Daughters of the Fatherland by Jericho J Johnson

adventurous challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I wish I had known before starting this book that the main "inspired by true events" aspect of this story was the main character. This explains the strong degree of "she's not a chosen one, but things just constantly fall into place around her", "this narcissist should be her idol, but she's actually thought something through (for once) and hates her" also "somehow she has -5 impulse control but she's a clever planner?" discrepancies I kept finding with the character and the book. At the end, where the author explains what is fact and what is fiction, it made me realize why she'd bothered me so much through the reading of it. All that being said, Rosa is a toxic force for chaos that I didn't enjoy, even knowing she was entirely fictional in her choices.

This is a very dark book about a young girl's stubborn refusal to let anything change her mind leading her through war-torn Germany. You get to hear and 'see' about a lot of awful war-related things, though miraculously almost none of them happen to the FMC. You get to watch her make a lot of really smart and really dumb decisions, but in the end, you do get to see her mature.

TLDR: Period accurate, if not historically accurate, child-in-war story without much to recommend it.
If you like WW2 dramas, recommended. 
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