This story switches back and forth between Berlin in 1933, and the East Village 1989. It is about Ilse, growing up in Berlin, and her best friend Renate. Although her family doesn't practice it, Renate discovers her lineage is partly Jewish. When she discovers this, Ilse renounces their friendship, and goes on to betray Renate and her family in the worst way possible. Years later, Ilse's daughter Ava discovers letters written to Renate by her newly-deceased mother and attempts to uncover missing pieces of her past and hopefully answers as to why her mother always kept her at arms=length.
I had trouble really getting into the book at first, but once I did I couldn't put it down. It was equally horrifying and captivating. I felt immersed in the story, as if I were actually there watching it all unfold. It is very hard to read (emotionally) but was well worth it.

this was extremely well written and hard to put down, though it took a hot minute to get to that stage - at first it was hard to get into, but then it finds its groove and i was intrigued and wanted to know what was going on. beautiful story, loved the back and forth. normally i prefer one storyline over the other in the back and forth, but i enjoyed both in this one. this was hard to put down and heartbreaking, definitely recommend and would read more from this author.

You might know the history of the the growth of Nazism in Germany, however this novel brings it to life with a stark and sickening realism. The result is an intense chilling account of the ramifications of Nazism on life in Germany, as it became fully embraced by the German populace, especially the youth in the 1930’s. The unveiling of the relationship between childhood friends Ilse, Renate and Franz will break your heart. The novel also has some surprise twists as well in the story of Ilse and her daughter Ava. I have to applaud Jennifer Epstein for writing not only a suspenseful novel that will keep you on your toes,but one one that will shake you to your core.

The story starts off slow and has a lot of flashing back and forth between years and characters. The story really took off about midway on the book. Ilse is truly a character to hate. Her change of relationship with Renate was disturbing but true to the times. The treatment of the Jewish students was eye opening. It is easy to feel sorry for Ava who just wants answers. The rise of Hitler and slaughter of the Jewish people as always is hard to read.

The time period for most of this book is WW II, the viewpoint and setting is Germany. Usually I gravitate toward England and occasionally France for novels set in the WW II era. This was, at times, difficult to read.

The first chapter starts in 1989, the setting New York. Ava Fischer sits on her bed crying after learning about her mother's death and past life. Ava had banished her mother, Ilse von Fischer, from her life ten years prior. You'll learn why as you read on. She receives a box from Ilse's attorney with her mother's ashes and a cache of letters addressed to Renate Bauer. Bauer isn't a name Ava has ever heard and doesn't know who the woman. Why would her mother be writing to Bauer?

Ava discovers unsettling things about her mother's involvement with the Ilse BDM (Bund Deutscher madel) in Nazi Germany. The chapters go back and forth mainly between Ilse and Renate in the early 1930's. Ava's chapters are interspersed.

Ilse and Renate were very good friends. They shared secrets, books, loved one another without question. There was one scene where they defied the German soldiers and went into a Jewish bakery together. The boycott of Jewish businesses didn't bother these two young ladies as they strode past the soldiers in search of sweets. Such boycotts were ridiculous for these headstrong teenagers.

But as you read on there is a sadness that such a wonderful friendship could be severely strained and eventually fractured over one being Jewish. Perhaps it’s the political climate in America today but this book had my mind drifting to the hate crimes and gang mentality I currently see in the news. While it was well written it was at times hard to read.

Reading how Ilse and Renate's friendship was tested because Renate was Jewish was uncomfortable. Reading how relationships could change in a snap because of one's heritage was sad.

Foodie book - no way. There were delectable bakery items and a traditional German meal mentioned.
Buttery poppyseed cakes, stolen, fruit pies, apple cakes, doughnuts, Schweinebraten in a crackling glaze of paprika, mustard and caraway seeds.

Publication date for this historical fiction novel is April 23, 2019. Check it out at your local bookstore or online book store.

Thank you very much Netgalley for this digital copy of the book. I received this complimentary copy and was not compensated for my opinion/review.

Wow this book was not an easy read. I read a lot of books about WWII but this one felt so much more personal than a lot of books. It was quite devastating. Ilse’s POV made me feel ill with her justifications and reasoning. I liked how it skipped around through POV and years. This book was really well-written and captivating.

This historical fiction is more of a family drama. We see Ava as an adult in New York, dealing with her memories and questions after the death of her mother Ilse. We also see Ilee, from a young teenager in 1930s Germany through the war and beyond. What has led to their estrangement? We are given glimpses - Ilse unwilling to answer Ava’s questions about her paternity, her abandonment at the end of the war.

I can’t remember another book I’ve read that covers Germany in the lead up to WWII. How ordinary Germans became caught up in the excitement of the Nazi propaganda. How people were so willing to believe the hype that they overlooked their prior friendships and alliances. Flip side, Epstein also shows the slowly encroaching hardship for the Jews. Which while better known, is wonderfully detailed.

If I’m reading historical fiction, I want to learn something. Epstein achieves that. She effortlessly slips facts into the story without disrupting the flow.

This book does bounce around, from time period to time period and from character to character. It demands attention. It’s not a quick or an easy read. But it’s engrossing. All of the multiple storylines work equally well. The characters are fully drawn. The word that most captures the feeling of this book is poignant, heartbreakingly so. Ilse is a difficult character to like. She’s not a rebel, not even someone standing on the sidelines. No, she’s an all-in, Nazi fanatic.

My thanks to netgalley and Crown Publishing for an advance copy of this book.

Wunderland is the story of childhood friends, Ilse and Renate. One grows up to be all a good Nazi sympathizing young lady can be. The other is first considered half Jewish, then later deemed a full Jew for legal purposes in the country that wanted nothing more than to dispose of her. While both girls survive the war, so many of their loved ones as well as their friendship don’t. Yet the girls are undeniably, inextricably connected. How much so only becomes apparent many decades later.
It’s a good book. It’s a good, heart wrenching, almost too realistic book. There is violence. There is sexual misbehavior. There is both a world and a sense of self within each woman at war. Unlike other wartime novels like My Enemy’s Cradle, this book almost took too long. It let a reader get mired in the sadness and destitution of a gargantuan war. That’s my only, and flimsy, critique. The ending, the ending would make up for even a much weaker plot.

I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This book was amazing. It was painful reading about the divide between good friends during the Nazi rise in Germany. So well written that it was difficult to put down. Highly recommended.

Ava has been estranged from her mother Ilse for years. When she receives a notice that her mother has died and a stack of letters addressed to Renate Bauer, she is both scared and curious. Alternating with the present is the story of two friends, Ilse and Renate. When Renate tries to join the Hitler Youth, she discovers that her father is Jewish. Ilse tries to stand by her, but ultimately decides that their friendship must be sacrificed for the Reich.

This was a well written and engaging story. The plot moved at a nice pace, and the interwoven stories worked well together. I did find both Ava and Ilse hard to like. They were not particularly endearing characters. Renate and her families story was the most interesting to me. Overall, well worth picking up.

This very powerful novel, set in Germany during the rise of Hitler, is the story of two teenagers Renate Bauer and Ilse Von Fischer The time does jump to 1989 where Ave, Ilse’s daughter, is living in New York City and back to Berlin. Since each chapter is headed with the name of the character and the year, the time skips and points-of-view are easily followed.

Renate and Ilse are best friends, closer than sisters. They are in and out of each other’s houses, share their secrets, wear friendship rings, and defend each other whenever necessary. The only thing they don’t have in common is that Ilse is a member of the BDM, the girls’ wing of the Nazi party youth movement which encouraged patriotism, national heritage, and loyalty to newly elected Chancellor Adolf Hitler. When Renate’s parents refuse permission for her to join, the girls decide to forge a permission letter. Renate is in shock when she is denied membership because her father is a Jew. As far as she knew, her professor father was a Christian.

At first, nothing much changes, but then gradually Ilse begins to pull back as the propaganda against Jews is escalated. She shifts her interests to her writing for a popular Nazi magazine aimed a young people. Renate has a difficult time comprehending what is happening. She begins to be bullied at school by her friends; the boy she is dating sends her a disgusting message; her parents lost their positions. She must face daily humiliations so she can try for a university position, but even that dream is shattered when she is forced out of her school and has to attend a school for Jews which has no resources and severe restrictions. Ilse, meanwhile, becomes more prominent in the youth movement. Still, the girls feel the tug of their former friendship.

This is an outstanding portrait of friendship and betrayal, horror and heroism. A worthy addition to the library of Holocaust literature.

I thought this was a wonderful piece of WWII historical fiction. It may seem somewhat disjointed (and some may find the alternating timelines from the viewpoints of different characters difficult to follow) however everything came together in the end in a remarkable way. This book was quite heartbreaking at times but I always feel it is important to remember the horrors that happened in the relatively recent past.

Thank you, Crown Publishing and NetGalley!

This novel by Jennifer Cody Epstein starts off in a very “chopped up”way .It is difficult to figure out what is happening but is intriguing enough to continue reading. It is certainly well worth continuing . There is human heartbreak, friendship, love, secrets and the atrocities of war all touched upon in Wunderland . I was glad that I made it through the beginning of this novel because it was certainly worth it. Wunderland is a terrific novel. I would like to thank netgalley and The Crown Publishing Group for giving me this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This book alternates between Germany in the 1930's where former best friends Isle and Renate end up on different sides and in circumstances neither ever would have imagined; and into the 1980's where Isle's daughter Ava is still trying to find out about the past that her mother won't talk about. The author did a good job of showing how this war against the Jews crept up little by little and how a child can easily get swept up in the Hitler youth without realizing what it really means ... and by the time one realizes, it's too late. This was an engrossing, heartbreaking story with unexpected twists.

Amazing book. I didn't want it to end. This is the story of childhood friendships both heart breaking and real. The level of betrayal possible in a war torn country was disturbing. The story of things that happened in Germany before, during and after WWII are almost unbelievable. If history hadn't documented these crimes again and again, they would not be believed. What makes this story move along is the traps that are set for and by us along the path of life. Two inseparable childhood friends face the unavoidable cruelty of religion, one Jewish and one not. The twists and turns along the way kept me interested all the way to the end. I was sorry when I read the last page.

I had trouble getting into this book, but trust me, if you stick with it the payoff is worth it. Once I got past the slow start the plot was tight and I was hooked.

The book is told in different time periods and tells the story of Ava, Ilse, and Renate. Ilse and Renate are friends in pre-WWII Berlin, and as the Nazis gain power they go in very different directions. Ava is Ilse's daughter in New York in more modern times, she knows her mother had secrets and she sets out to discover them.

This is a great read for historical fiction fans, Thanks to Crown Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The novel is told in the voices of three women—Ilse, Renate and Ava—and in different places and time periods, ranging from Germany in the 1930s to New York in 1977 and 1989. Ilse and Renate are young girls and friends in 1930s Berlin, and Ava is Ilse’s daughter who lives in New York in the 1970s and 1980s chapters. The book bounces around a lot between different time periods and characters. But each chapter identifies the character and the time, so as long as you pay attention to that, it’s not confusing.

The strength of Epstein’s novel is that she takes us into the minds of her characters and makes us share their experiences and feelings as if we were there with them. Of course we know the horrors of Nazism, but Epstein manages to make us put our knowledge aside and see things as we might have if we had been there when the Nazis consolidated their power and Hitler’s vision for a glorious Germany galvanized much of a nation.

There is one particularly gripping scene of Ilse and Renate going to a movie theater to see Leni Riefenstal’s <i>Triumph of the Will</i>, her documentary about Hitler and the Nazi Party Congress of 1934. If you’ve ever ever seen that film, you know how impressive an achievement it was in both film and propaganda. The girls watch it in a theater packed with people who have lived through their country’s defeat in the Great War, then the massive hyperinflation and economic depression. Now they are watching a stirring film that begins with the wonders of flight, the arrival of their leader in the ancient city of Nuremberg, torch-lit processions and then the leader’s spellbinding speech painting a vivid picture of a glorious future in which Germany vanquishes its enemies and becomes great again. The theater erupts in rapturous salutes, and Epstein makes us feel a part of it. The emotional appeal of extremist authoritarianism is all too horrifically clear.

Through Ilse and Renate—and Renate’s family—Epstein shows us how this extremism supplants moral and societal norms with a new ideology in which there is only one correct race and outlook, and those who don’t or can’t fit that ideology are first marginalized and then victimized. The Nazi-minded people suddenly believe themselves to be superior, not because of anything they’ve done, but merely because they are “Aryans.” Almost as a pack of animals, they turn on their non-Aryan friends and neighbors. Their victims can’t understand how they are now suddenly worthy only of contempt and cruelty by people they thought were fellow Germans and part of their community. Though Epstein’s tone is never didactic, it’s impossible not to read this book and think about the many people today who have learned nothing from history and are caught up in the same extremist and hateful thinking that only leads to alienation and destruction, not greatness.

The purpose of the Ilse/Ava element of the story, and the 1989 chapters is to relate what happened to Ilse, Renate and their families after 1939, and to reveal the pain that grew from Ilse’s and Germany’s Nazi past. These chapters (maybe 20% of the book’s total) are a little overwrought, but maybe they seem that way because the rest of the book is so affecting without being overly emotional.

While so many WW2 historical novels feel exploitative, this one is raw and authentic.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

"An intimate portrait of a friendship severed by history..."

A friendship truly severed - by stupidity, by ignorance, by passion, by hate. Narrated in the first person by three women, their story unfolds over several generations, from pre-war Germany, through WWII and into its aftermath. It is not particularly graphic, or gory. But it is destroying. It will piss you off. You will hate. Without giving too much away, it felt like watching a train about to crash but having no way to stop it.

With a frustrating ending, that left me with so many questions and emotions, (wtf - was this someone's idea of a happy ending??) this novel made me think, left me uncomfortable, angry, euphoric - so perfect.

This review cannot do justice to it, so please go read it for yourself.

Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein is and will become a classic piece historical fiction. Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. The period of WWII is often written about in many historical fiction novels. While many authors write about the war, not all of them do it with the same excellence of Ms. Epstein. She has clearly heavily researched her topic and it has paid off tremendously. When I read a work of fiction, I want to feel as if it is real. I want to feel like I know the characters. I want to learn something new about a subject. In this case, I not only felt that it was real, I felt at times that if I was experiencing the events in real time. I also came away with a better understanding of what happened to the Jewish people during the rise of the rise of Nazi propaganda.

The format of this story is the shifting back and forth between 1939 and 1989. In fact, I liked how this style built tension and added to the compassion I felt for certain characters. Ms. Epstein has executed this technique with precision. Most often in cases of shifting time lines, I enjoy one story line over the other, however, this was an exception to the rule. Ms. Epstein excellence in writing makes the story ebb and flow and this story would be a disaster in the hands of a less skilled writer.

This novel because of Ms. Epstein’s writing excellence has added significantly to my understanding of the horrors that occurred to German Jews before the beginning of WWII. The story takes place as the rise of propaganda which ultimately turned Hitler’s followers into the monsters we have read about. The severe humiliations suffered by Jews even before the full-scale holocaust occurred. The book delves deeply into the steps by which an ordinary, decent person could become monster. This story is a wonderful page-turner of a story! I loved the story. The ending is terrific! It was totally unexpected and entirely utterly surprising. I will definitely be reading more from Epstein.

Wunderland tells the story of prewar Nazi Germany through the eyes of Ilse von Fischer, the quintessential German maiden and her childhood friend Renata Bauer. While both girls grew up as best friends, never thinking anything could break them apart. Renata finds out while trying to join the BDM with Ilse, that her family has Jewish ties. Both girls begin to experience life in totally different ways. Choices are made, and far reaching consequences follow.

I thought this was a beautiful, yet unsurprisingly heartbreaking story. Friendships, especially among girls are always hard. Friendships in times of war are even harder. Epstein wrote a beautiful novel about friendship, betrayal, and survival. I felt if provides a unique perspective into life during this time. Most books written about Nazi Germany tend to focus on those who were prosecuted, and rightly so. While this certainly has that, with Renata's point of view, it also shows how hard it was for some to assimilate into the Nazi Party, while not wholly buying into the Nazi philosophy. Ilse certainly struggled with her patriotism for Germany, and her love for her mischling friend.

I thought it was very well written. Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC for review.