A review by crafalsk264
The Butterfly and the Violin by Kristy Cambron

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

When eight year old Sera goes to an art gallery on a trip to Paris with her father, she sees a haunting painting of a young woman with a tattooed number on her arm and falls in love with it. Fast forward to current day and a grownup Sera owns a gallery in Manhattan and is reminded of that original painting when she comes across a very good copy. Mourning her father’s death and a broken engagement, she decides that she has to learn the story of the young woman with the piercing blue eyes and find that original painting.

In a dual timeline, we find the heart and soul of the novel, Adele is a young violinist known as “Austria’s Sweetheart”. Adele falls in love with Vladimir who is a cellist and a grocer’s son who is organizing ways to assist Jews to escape from hiding and make it out to safety. A tender love blossoms between them. But they are reported and are arrested by the Nazis. Adele is sent to Auschwitz and is saved from the gas chambers because she is a violinist. She is selected for the Camp’s Orchestra. With a small group of musicians, she plays to entertain the guards and visiting Nazi leaders, but also for the Camp’s prisoners as they come and go between their barracks and their work locations. The book is a Christian romance so there is a religious subplot. Usually this would be a negative but the focus is unobtrusive and, when it does appear, it fits in with the story as a plot element. For example, although Adele is a Christian and most of the other prisoners are Jewish, each woman observes her faith on her own, they acknowledge each has a belief in God and worship in their own way. The woman who led the orchestra becomes Adele’s surrogate mother. She paints a portrait of Adele as she looks forward to a future outside the Camp and the love, hope, and prayers she has for her fellow prisoners.

This book was an enigma—on one hand, it is one of the best portrayals of the horrors of the Holocaust from one woman’s experience I have read and, on the other, it is a sweet, touching love story. The timeline with the WWII story is captivating, however the current day story is not very interesting. It did not hold my attention except when the plots intersected and one added to the other. I listened to the audiobook and was tempted to fast forward through some of it. I would have liked more of Adele’s story and less of Sera’s.