The Book of Lost Names

The Book of Lost Names is my second book by Kristin Harmel and like The Winemaker's Wife (which I read two weeks ago - see review here), it is set during WWII, uses two time frames and is inspired by a true story. 

The focus of this story is set in France during WWII while the current-day time frame remains quite secondary. The older story line follows Eva, a young Parisian Jewish woman who suddenly finds herself (and her mother) in a small French village. There, Eva uses her artistic talents to help a small cell of the French Resistance by forging false documents to help hundreds of Jewish children escape to safety in Switzerland to avoid the Nazis.  

It's an awesome premise, right? The setting of WWII is always an emotional one and the book starts out (and ends) strong but the tension and pacing slow dramatically in the middle as the story focuses more on Eva's day-to-day tasks as a forger. It's at this point that a lot of page time was given to rehashing the same arguments between Eva and her mother, whose constant complaints, belittling comments towards Eva and her obstinate behaviour quickly became tiresome. We see some growth in Eva but I can't honestly say I felt invested in her life and even with the subject matter and setting, I didn't feel emotionally connected to the story like I thought I would.

The Book of Lost Names had an intriguing premise, but I found it to be a predictable story that I was hoping would be more emotional. I'm hopeful that it may introduce readers to parts of history they knew nothing about and perhaps encourage them to learn more about the French Resistance. For those who enjoy learning about the human toll of war but with a lighter hand, The Book of Lost Names would be a great pick.   

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Simon and Schuster Canada for providing 

me with a complimentary eBook copy of this book in 

exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 3 stars

Author: Kristin Harmel

Genre: Historical Fiction (WWII)

Type and Source: eBook from NetGalley

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada

First Published: July 21, 2020

Opening Lines: May 2005 - It's a Saturday morning, and I'm 

midway through my shift at the Winter Park 

Public Library when I see it.

Book Description from GoodReads: Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in this unforgettable historical novel from the international bestselling author of the “epic and heart-wrenching World War II tale” (Alyson Noel, #1 New York Times bestselling author) The Winemaker’s Wife.

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.