Nineteen year old Emma Bau has been married only three weeks when Nazi tanks thunder into her native Poland. Within days, her husband, Jacob, is forced to disappear underground, leaving her imprisoned within the city’s decrepit Jewish ghetto. But the , in the dead of night, the resistance smuggles her out. Taken to Jacob’s Catholic aunt, Krystal, Emma takes on a new identity as a gentile, Anna Lipowski.
Emma is introduced to Kommandant Richwalder who hires her as his personal Secretary. To gain information for the resistance, Anna gets close to the Kommandant. ( )

This was a great read! Found myself not being able to put it down in some places. I love Jenoff's descriptions and her view of the WW2 Nazi era. Looking forward to the second book in the series. ( )

Emma Bau is newly married to her love, Jacob. Poland is taken over by the Nazis just a year into their marriage and they are split apart by necessity and Jacob's politics. Left behind she is taken in by Krysia, she has a choice to help the Resistance. The choices she makes effects all of their lives. I just wish she had not been so indecisive until the end of the book. ( )

This book was very well written, drawing me in from the very beginning. The main character is a young Jewish woman who struggles as her home town of Krakow is occupied by the Nazis. Her husband is part of the resistance and leaves her behind to go underground. Experiencing the Jewish ghetto and then living under an assumed identity, she begins working for a high up official gaining his trust and sharing information with the resistance.

I loved the way Emma/Anna was a very real person during her horrifying situations. She had real life feelings and conflicting emotions. The story was well told and kept me engage right until the end. ( )

During WWII newly married nineteen year old Emma assumes a new identity and is sent to live in Krakow after her husband goes underground while helping to fight with the resistance. Through a series of circumstances, she meets Kommandant Richwalder and is hired as his personal assistant. She tries to hide her Jewish heritage while also finding a way to gain Richwalder's trust and access to confidential documents. As the story unfolds, she finds herself experiencing confusing feelings for a person she should consider to be her enemy.

I partially read this book hoping to learn more about the occupation of Poland during WWII but I found the story to be lacking in concrete historical details. Instead I'd consider this to be a romance novel placed during a historical time period. Some of the conversational language used sounds too modern to me and as other readers have pointed out, one character makes prolific use of the word "okay." Finally, the ending seems really contrived with a whole series of coincidences that do not make any sense.

Don't get me wrong, as the writing isn't horrible and it wouldn't be fair to hold it to the standard of a nonfiction book from a historical perspective but overall it was just disappointing. ( )