quoththegirl 's review for:

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

5.0

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When I was little, I read anything and everything, but my mom put the kibosh on Holocaust literature because she didn't want me to get nightmares. (Somehow a lot of other things slipped by her, including a horrifying young adult book that included a lynching that somehow had been misshelved in the children's department of the library--that one DID give me nightmares.) Then when I was older and had read far too much Holocaust literature, I decided I would take a break from it for several years. All that is to say that I never actually read The Hiding Place until now. My mom was probably right; I wouldn't give this to an eight-year-old. But this book is beautiful, and I'm so glad I finally read it. Literarily speaking, it's very well done, but Corrie's story is so heart-wrenching, honest, tragic, and exquisite that the book would shine even if it weren't well written. Still a hard book to read--I would listen while driving and would inevitably get to my destination with tears to wipe away--but so worth it. My husband's great-grandmother and other extended family members were in Ravensbrück, the same camp that Corrie and her sister were in, which made the story all the more real.