A review by lc8558
City of Thieves by David Benioff

4.0

David is visiting his grandparents in Florida and gets his grandfather to talk about Leningrad during WW2. I seem to be reading a lot of books about this time period recently. Lev is 17 and has stayed in Leningrad while his mother and sister fled. One night while on the roof he and his friends see a paratrooper that is going to land near their building. When they find him Lev and his friends take items from the soldier, if caught you can be shot on the spot and there are Russian soldiers driving up the street. Lev is caught, but not killed. He spends the night in the crosses (jail) and meets Kolya a deserter. Instead of being killed for their transgressions they have to find a dozen eggs for a colonel. The colonel's daughter is getting married and she must have a cake. At times serious and others funny it tells the escapade of trying to find the eggs and still survive. I thought I'd had enough books about WWII lately, but this one was different. I liked Lev. I liked that he knew he was still a boy even though he was pretending to be a man and that he admitted to being afraid.