A review by virginiagp
The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh

5.0

I read Katherine Marsh's book Nowhere Boy and loved it, so I was excited to learn of this new release in 2023. The Lost Year is a historical fiction book that addresses an event many people have little to no knowledge of - the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s. Stories from this horrific time were largely hidden by the Soviet government and propaganda for years, only really surfacing in the last couple of decades.

Marsh's story is related through three narrators: the first two are girls - one living in the United States and the other in Ukraine - in the 1930s. They are cousins, but are not aware of one another at the beginning of the book. The third narrator is a boy named Matthew living in 2020 in the United States just after Covid has sent everyone into isolation. Matthew lives with his mother and his great-grandmother, who has come to live with them due to a fear that she won't survive in a retirement home in the midst of a global pandemic. As it turns out, Matthew's great-grandmother, Gigi, is one of the cousins, and much of the story is revealed as Gigi reluctantly shares what happened in the 1930s through letters, journals, and photographs.

Marsh's story is full of fascinating details about Ukraine soon after it came under the Soviet regime, characters who the reader will care about deeply, and some plot twists and turns that make this a suspenseful page-turner. It is also one more cautionary tale about how important it is to be aware of history so that it isn't repeated. Beautiful writing and a memorable story!