A review by kittykornerlibrarian
The Taster by V.S. Alexander

2.0

Did Not Finish. Great premise; dubious execution. I always enjoy World War II novels that are set in Germany, or Austria, or Poland, so I was pleased to hear about The Taster. It's an interesting story to be sure; in 1943, Magda, who is maybe in her early 20s, is living in Berlin. Her parents decide to send her out of the way of Allied bombers to her aunt and uncle (who are devout Nazis) in Southern Germany. Magda ends up getting hired as a taster, one of fifteen young women (why is this a woman's job?) who taste the Fuhrer's food to test it for poison before he eats it. So she's right there at the nerve center of the Third Reich. Could be a great story, right? But the prose and the dialogue are so unemotional and wooden that the story merely plods along. Falling in love, coping with the murder of one's roommate, seeing a beloved father in the hospital... all of these, and more, should evoke feeling, and the author fails at this. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I stopped. Would probably not read another by this author.