Skip to main content

Featured

Book Review - By Your Side By Ruth Jones

  By Your Side By Ruth Jones Genre - Women's Fiction My Rating - ★★★★★ I had the incredible chance to dive into an advance copy of Ruth Jones's, By Your side, thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers. Due to be released on 22nd May 2025   This is the third book that I have read by Ruth Jones and it really did not disappoint.   Synopsis Linda and Levi will never meet. But they’re going to change each other’s lives. In her role at the council’s Unclaimed Heirs Unit, Linda Standish investigates the lives of those who’ve died alone and tracks down any living relatives. She’s been a friend to the friendless for the past thirty-three years. And now she’s looking forward to an early retirement. But before she hangs up her lanyard, Linda takes on one last case – that of Levi Norman – a Welshman who made his home on a remote Scottish island for the past five years. What brought Levi here? And who did he leave behind? Obliged to travel (by hear...
Post a Comment
Read more
Labels

Book Review - Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris





My rating: ★★★★☆
Goodreads: 4.39/5
Genre: Historical Fiction

Cilka’s Journey is based on the heart-breaking true story of Cilka Klein, is the sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz. It was a nominee for Goodreads Choice Award for Historical Fiction (2019) 
This book is available as an Ebook, Audiobook, Paperback, Hardback and Audio CD 

Synopsis


In 1942 Cilka Klein is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival.

After liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator by the Russians and sent to a desolate, brutal prison camp in Siberia known as Vorkuta, inside the Arctic Circle.

Innocent, imprisoned once again, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, each day a battle for survival. Cilka befriends a woman doctor, and learns to nurse the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under unimaginable conditions. And when she tends to a man called Alexandr, Cilka finds that despite everything, there is room in her heart for love.



My Review


After reading The Tattooist of Auschwitz, I was intrigued to find out what happened to Cilka. Well this certainly answered my questions that I was left with. It could be read as a stand-alone book but as a second book in a series it works well to.

Its historical fiction based around a real person’s life, made from documentary research and with the help of those who knew her e.g. Lale (The Tattooist of Auschwitz) the author tells Cilka’s Journey. It explores her selflessness and guilt whilst highlighting the cruelty and suffering that she and her friends went through.

This book I felt was a slower pace than The Tattooist of Auschwitz, but it certainly didn’t affect what the author was trying to portray. The horrors that were endured and the friendships that were made make for a captivating but tragic tale of survival. It is just utterly heart breaking to think that this actually happened and that these people had to live and survive through such times. 

Although Cilka's Journey covers some dark disturbing times in history it was an easy read, those horrific times were contrasted with the strength and survival of the characters and I struggled to put it down. 

I believe I said this about the Tattooist of Auschwitz but this book will stay with me for quite a while and really puts your own life into perspective.



Cillka's Journey is available to purchase here  at amazon






The Tattooist of Auschwitz is available to purchase here at amazon



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment