Book Review: Sarah's Key

I've got another book review for you today. This book was another one I had heard mentioned by two or three bloggers I follow and so I thought I would give it a try and I am so glad I did. The name of the book is Sarah's Key and it was written by Tatiana de Rosnay.

I cannot give a lot of details about the book without spoiling it for those of you who may want to read it; but, I will do the best I can. The book begins with two stories. In chapter one, we are introduced to a little girl living in Paris in 1942 and in chapter two we read about a woman, Julia, living in Paris in 2002.

The little girl and her family are Jewish and are taken from their home in the middle of the night in the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup on July 16, 1942. In the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, over 13,000 Jews were gathered by the French police under German control and were eventually sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. They were first sent to camps in France where the men were separated from the women and children, then the children from the women. The story is told from the girl's perspective and is heart-breaking and captivating all at the same time. I could not stop reading and each time I came to the end of a chapter, I couldn't wait to get to the next chapter told from the girl's perspective to find out what was going to happen next.

Julia is an American ex-pat who has lived in France for 25-years. She is married to a Frenchman and has one daughter. She is in her 40s and is a writer for a magazine in Paris. When she comes into the story, she has been given the assignment of covering the 60th anniversary of the Ve' d'Hiv Roundup and, it probably goes unsaid, becomes deeply moved by the stories she hears and the information she gathers. In addition to her writing assignment, she is also having problems in her home-life. The story of the Ve d'Hiv Roundup becomes so much more to Julia than she ever imagined, and that, my friends, is the treasure of this book.

This is a novel and none of the characters are real, but the facts surrounding the story make it seem very real. It is a gripping story and it sucks you in from the first words on the page. I would love to tell you more, but I'm afraid I cannot do that without giving away more of the story. You will have to read for yourself to find out what happened. This is one of the better books I have read in a long while. According to Amazon, it's around 400 pages and I read it in three days and I was really disappointed when it ended because I wanted to know... what next? Alas, I will have to make up the "next" in my mind. If you check it out let me know how you liked it.