A review by maryquitecontrary_22
The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel

3.0

If the movie Defiance and the book Where the Crawdads Sing made a baby… you’d get The Forest of Vanishing Stars …

Harmel bases her novel on the remarkable feat of human history in which Jewish refugees fled the Nazi takeover and survived in the forests of Poland during World War II. The group of Jewish people in the story are led by Yona, a young woman who has spent nearly her entire life as a nomad of the forest. The story is cleverly researched and quite an original take on WWII literature, especially considering how much of it is out there.

Read It if You Like…
-A strong female lead/heroine
-Issues of faith front-and-center, rather than swept under the rug (in this case, Judaism)
-Details of nature and survival skills
Skip It if You Don’t Like…
-Dialogue that may feel contrived at times
-A protagonist without any flaws

I received this book in a GoodReads giveaway (my first one, yay!). My thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free copy.