A review by lauracooleyjohnson
The German Midwife by Mandy Robotham

2.0

This book should have been good. It had an interesting premise: what if Adolf Hitler fathered a baby and we told the story from the midwife’s point of view? Sounds good right? Lots of history could be explored and tension to be built. But I thought it fell flat. It was like reading the outline of a story, or a draft script from a puppet show before the characters have depth or the dialogue is actually finalized. “Enter midwife who encounters dashingly handsome SS dude. My, he’s cute. Proceed to have discussion about the big bad Nazis so we can establish that SS dude is really not a bad man and then have plausible romantic sex scene.” Gah! Two things redeemed this from being a 1-star loser in my eyes: credible flashback scenes to life in the labor camps, and the depictions of labor and birth, including the strength of women shining through in horrendous circumstances.