Tag Archives: Ukraine

Review: The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh

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The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh

The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukranian Famine
Katherine Marsh
MacMillan
Published January 17, 2023

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About The Lost Year

From the author of Nowhere Boy – called “a resistance novel for our times” by The New York Times – comes a brilliant middle-grade survival story that traces a harrowing family secret back to the Holodomor, a terrible famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s.

Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation.

But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh’s latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor – the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades.

An incredibly timely, page-turning story of family, survival, and sacrifice, inspired by Marsh’s own family history, The Lost Year is perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys’ Between Shades of Gray and Alan Gratz’s Refugee.

My Review

Stories with alternating timelines are hit or miss for me, but Katherine Marsh is an author whose books have been on my To Be Read list for a long time. That plus the Kyiv setting and rarely explored place/time in history made this book too good to pass up.

It took me a couple chapters to feel like I found my footing in the story. Matthew, our present-day main character, is chafing at the isolation and boredom of the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Because his family cares for his 100-year-old great grandmother, they stay isolated from the community.

He ends up tasked with helping his great grandmother (GG) sort through some old papers and files. Through this, he discovers a family history he’d known nothing about. Two point-of-view characters from the past, cousins Mila and Helen, reveal the story of the Holodomor, the terrible famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine.

From there, I felt like the pacing of the story picked up, and the connections between the past and present helped to fuel the forward momentum of the story. Matthew’s dad is a journalist reporting on the pandemic from France. He and Matthew discuss the (awful) power of misinformation. They talk about how people can continue to believe falsehoods even as their friends and neighbors experience tragedy.

Just as in the past, Mila at first refuses to believe that her country is experiencing a preventable famine that has already killed thousands.

Conclusion

I thought the way Matthew’s relationship with GG develops and his budding interest in history and writing were really cool elements of the story. I loved that even in that, he shared a connection with Helen, his great-great-great-aunt(??) from the 1930s.

Altogether, I felt like the past and present timeline intersected at just the right moments. It shared themes that built on each other in powerful ways. I loved the introduction to a part of history that isn’t frequently explored, and the connection to the battle against misinformation we still face today.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Representation
Helen was born in America after her father emigrated here from Ukraine as a young man. Mila and Nadiya are Ukrainian.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
References to celebrating Christian Orthodox holidays. Reference to the fact that religion has been outlawed in Soviet Ukraine.

Violent Content
Someone delivers a sealed envelope containing live lice to a family in an attempt to infect them with Typhus. Boys attack another boy on the playground. An older girl fights them off. Some descriptions of starvation and death. References to a man being shot.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of THE LOST YEAR in exchange for my honest review.

Review: The Silent Unseen by Amanda McCrina

Book Review and Content, Historical, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

The Silent Unseen
Amanda McCrina
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published April 5, 2022

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About The Silent Unseen

A mesmerizing historical novel of suspense and intrigue about a teenage girl who risks everything to save her missing brother.

Poland, July 1944. Sixteen-year-old Maria is making her way home after years of forced labor in Nazi Germany, only to find her village destroyed and her parents killed in a war between the Polish Resistance and Ukrainian nationalists. To Maria’s shock, the local Resistance unit is commanded by her older brother, Tomek―who she thought was dead. He is now a “Silent Unseen,” a special-operations agent with an audacious plan to resist a new and even more dangerous enemy sweeping in from the East. When Tomek disappears, Maria is determined to find him, but the only person who might be able to help is a young Ukrainian prisoner and the last person Maria trusts―even as she feels a growing connection to him that she can’t resist.

My Review

I found this book to be really compelling, especially the relationship between Kostya and Maria. I don’t know anything about the real history of the time period (1944) or how realistic the events in the story are, but I found THE SILENT UNSEEN to be really moving.

There were a couple of weird things about it to me, though. The title and cover copy kind of make it sound like Tomek is a major character, and he really wasn’t? It would make more sense if this is the first book in a series, and the Silent Unseen become a more major part of the story across multiple books, but I don’t see anything stating that this is anything other than a standalone novel.

The story was also a lot darker than I expected. Kostya joined the Ukrainian nationalists unwillingly, and was pretty severely tortured during his service with them. I liked his character a lot, though. His whole goal is to find his way back to his mother and sister and protect them. He seems young and somehow innocent despite everything he’s been through.

On the whole, I liked this book. I feel like it ended in kind of a weird place, like I feel like I’m still waiting for some shoes to drop? So again, it feels like this should be a series, but I don’t see anything about that being the case. If it’s a standalone, I feel weird about the way it ended because so much was still up in the air. In any case, I enjoyed reading THE SILENT UNSEEN, and it made me want to read more of the real history of what happened in Poland following the end of World War II.

If you liked THE GIRL IN THE BLUE COAT by Monica Hesse, check this one out.

Content Notes The Silent Unseen

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Maria is Polish. Kostya is Ukranian. Kostya has experienced some pretty horrific torture and that effects his behavior in some PTSD-like symptoms.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used somewhat frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Vague references to rape. Maria has had experiences in which favors come with a price, and she’s afraid she’ll have those experiences again. Kiss between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
Kostya keeps a statue of St. Constantine in his room.

Violent Content
Maria escaped from a labor camp. References to and descriptions of torture and war crimes. Maria shoots and kills several men. Soldiers wound Kostya.

Drug Content
Captors used morphine as part of torturing Kostya.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of THE SILENT UNSEEN in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Finding Refuge by Victorya Krouse

Book Review and Content, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

Finding Refuge: Real-Life Immigration Stories from Young People
Victorya Krouse
Zest Books
Published September 7, 2021

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About Finding Refuge

What is a refugee? This anthology recounts the personal immigration experiences of teenage refugees from around the world, including where they came from, why they left, how they arrived in the United States, and what happened next. These writers know firsthand it means to leave a beloved but unsafe homeland for a distant place where everyone speaks another language.

English teacher Victorya Rouse has assembled a collection of real-world stories essential for our times, complete with maps, context, and background on the refugees’ home countries. As immigration has catapulted into the current discourse, this poignant collection emphasizes the USA’s rich tradition of welcoming people from all over the world.

My Review

I started reading this book the week that Russia invaded Ukraine. Listening as the number of refugees escaping the country continues to grow, watching reports of people trapped in their homes with little to no food or water due to constant warfare happening around them, has truly been heartbreaking.

This book is filled with stories, some very much like what we’ve seen and heard in the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These are stories of families who loved their cities and homes, forced to flee due to conflict or other life-threatening situations. Every story is moving.

I liked that the book is organized by continent or area of the world. The individual stories are preceded by a short list of facts about the country where the person is from and a little bit of historical information about that area and why people have left. I felt like that kind of helped me build a little more understanding of what was happening. It also gives a little bit of a sense of how the individual stories fit into the larger global history.

For some reason, I assumed all the stories would be from refugees who’ve entered the United States within the last ten years or so, but that isn’t the case. Some of the stories are about people who arrived in their teens as far back as 1975. Most are from the last 20 years, but several are from the 1990s. It depends on the conflict and the part of the world that caused someone to become a refugee.

On the whole, I feel like I learned a lot reading this book. It seems to be a collection of stories from refugees in their own words. The stories sometimes read like a high school assignment meant to answer a series of questions. I think I expected something more like brief memoirs written from interviews between the author and the refugees.

Reading FINDING REFUGE made me want to read WE ARE DISPLACED by Malala Yousafzai. I haven’t read it yet. It seems like it would be along similar lines, but written by a a refugee herself.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
FINDING REFUGE tells the stories of refugees from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and North America. All traveled to the United States to make new homes.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
References to getting married.

Spiritual Content
Some references to faith like Christianity or Islam.

Violent Content
References to war. A few brief mentions of a family member being killed. A couple mentions of human trafficking and drug trafficking.

Drug Content
A few mentions of drug trafficking.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of FINDING REFUGE in exchange for my honest review.