Kristin Harmel books are always a favorite and this might be her best yet.
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.
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..
Moving, heartbreaking, informative, memorable characters and so much more. Everything a great book needs this one has.

While this book took awhile to keep me going seen as Historical fiction is not my preferred genre, the second half of the book hooked me. I was so taken in by the main characters, Eva and Remy that I couldn’t put the book down. These characters highlight the heroic acts of Jews and non Jews alike. Lives were saved by falsifying documents. The ending of this book blew me away! This book will stay with me for a long time. This book will stay with me for a long time. Read it!

I. am. a. wreck. What a stunning story! The last 100 pages had me crying like a baby the entire time, and I'm still not done. I'm utterly speechless after reading this. I don't think I've ever read anything like it before and I want SO MUCH MORE historical fiction in my life now. Eva - what a heroine! Remy - what a knight! Them together - WOW. Their bravery fighting against the Nazis in occupied France is incredibly inspirational. The fact that this story is also inspired by true events is just - WOW. It was fast-paced, witty, and heartfelt beyond belief. A must-read and definitely one of my top favorites of 2020!

What a wonderful book! I have now added Kristin Harmel to my list, I want to read all her books.

I found the story to be beautiful and powerful. It is the story of a quiet heroine who saved thousands of life by forging papers for Jews. I adored Eva and her quiet persistence. This is a deeply moving story that highlights the efforts of people that history has glazed over and their choices that saved lives during world war 2. I highly encourage people to read this book.

Available today: The Lost Book of Names by Kristin Harmel

****4.5/5 stars

It's everything you'd look for in WWII historical fiction. Sooo good you'll want to add to your 'keeper' collection.

Recommended readers:

if you like WWII historical fiction, especially based on a true story
If you enjoy a comeback story with dual plotlines
and, naturally, if you liked Kristin Harmel's other offerings, The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network.

Here's my Rankings:

4.5/5 for characters
4.5/5 for plot
4.5/5 overall
2/5 steaminess
REVIEW FROM BOOKS FOR HER:

I'm a fan of historical fiction WWII, based on a true story. And The Lost Book of Names is everything I'd want from this genre, providing the perspective from one of the world's most challenging times which brought out the best and worst of human nature.

Eva Abrahms has been forced to flee Paris after her father is arrested as a Polish Jew. On her way to escape, she stops in a small town in the Free Zone close to Switzerland, where she finds she has a talent for forgery and makes her impact on the war.

From terrible loss to brave escapes, Eva sacrifices all to save others and to record the identities of children escaping death from Nazi occupied France. You'll feel the heartbreak, successes and tragedy of the times, even as you see how Eva has tried to forget her past and live in modern times.

Available today: The Lost Book of Names by Kristin Harmel

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel is the story of Eva, a Jewish girl forced to flee her home in Paris when the Nazis arrest her father. Full of fear for the future, she and her mother make it to a small town in the Free Zone where Eva’s artistic ability is realized in making false identification materials to help smuggle Jewish children into Switzerland. This book isn’t a purely true story, but was inspired by real events which makes it that much more poignant.

It is nice to know that midst all of the craziness, 2020 still has some special treasures to offer; The Book of Lost Names being one of them. This is my favorite book of the year thus far, and it will be difficult to unseat. Kristen Harmel fully emerges her readers in the life of Eva Traube, graduate student turned forger for the French Resistance. We get a glimpse of Eva's life as an eighty-six-year-old librarian in Florida, but most of the story takes place in the early 1940s in France. The book is well-researched, well-written, and quite emotional. I give it my highest recommendation, and am grateful to have received a copy from Simon & Schuster via NetGalley without obligation. All opinions expressed here are my own.

This is a brilliant piece of historical fiction. I liked how Eva found the Book of Lost Names while working as a librarian decades after the war. She had thought that the memories of this time period were gone, but she has to face them again after finding this book again. I loved the bravery depicted in this character, along with the brilliant descriptions of the time period.

4.5 STARS


Word War II is without a doubt one of the darkest times of mankind and war stories set in that era are often unsettling because they force us to take a hard look at our heritage and our own position towards race and racism. THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES showcases how harrowing times and great adversity can bring out the best and the worst in people,  it's about finding hope in places you didn't even know to look for it and joy and light in the darkest hours.

It is against the backdrop of a Paris deeply involved in World War II that bookish Eva, a young Jewish woman, who was raised sheltered is forced to grow up quickly when her father is being deported by the Nazis. On the run with her devastated mother and on the way to neutral Switzerland she finds a modicum of safety in a small town south of France. Eva's artistic talent stirs the interest of the local resistance. Her own need for documents that pass Nazi scrutiny draws her into a life of secrecy and danger and soon she's one of the most prolific forgers in France.

"I was never a hero. I was just a young woman trying to do the right thing. .”

I loved Eva, despite the atrocities happening right in front of her nose she fought courageously, looked death in the eye and did whatever she could to help save lives. She had so much honor and gentleness about her and I think that's what Remy, a man who she comes to first trust and then love, drew to her. Torn between her belief and care for her mother on one side and her love for a Catholic man and loyalty to the people she has come to care about Eva has to make some tough decisions, and life itself is at stake, especially when you don't know who you can trust.

Remy's affable and charming personality made him a favorite right from the start. There was a distinct sense of goodness and warmth that radiated off the pages. I had no idea how the author would manage not to break my heart completely but she totally accomplished that feat.

I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.

I wanted to give this story a full five stars so bad, the story itself would have deserved it but there is this one niggle I have. Eva's mother is a real piece of work, blaming her daughter for her husband's deportation, being mean and lashing out. And I so, so wished Eva would have stood up for herself, instead she tried to placate her mother  and many times it felt like Eva was the parent calming a whiny toddler throwing a temper tantrum. I could see why she was that way with her mother, still...She was such a strong heroine in every regard but not when it came to her mother.

The book jumps between wartime and 2005 and while we know the significance of The Book of Lost Names pretty much from the start, we learn so much more about it and why it is even more important to Eva than we thought.
The last 30% are a quick-moving, action-filled and emotional tour de force that left me a little breathless, as if I had lived through Eva and Remy's big finale. Riding on an emotional roller coaster that drags you through hope, love, trust, friendship, humanity and secrets, heartbreak and betrayal this story is a stark reminder that we aren't done processing and learning from this dark spot in our history by a long shot. It made me feel uncomfortable and sad and tear up, but also smile. I loved THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES with all my heart.

“Sir,” I reply, “we are only responsible for the things we do—or fail to do—ourselves. You owe me no apology.”

What a remarkable book based on a remarkable story! This was my introduction to this author and I can't wait to go back and read her previous books.
I find books concerning World War especially interesting and Harmel did a superb job of weaving her story about the subject of forgery in Europe during that time. She conveys the danger and horror of the Holocaust while juxtaposing the goodness and bravery of many involved. The history of the French involvement, those who collaborated as well as those who resisted, balance the story and makes the reader examine many aspects of war. I am a fan!

I love books about WWII and the bravery people showed by doing what needed to be done to help the resistance. Kristin Harmel has written other books set during the time, including The Winemakers Wife. I was so excited to have the chance to read the book before it is published on July 21st!

The Book of Lost Names is Eva’s story fighting for the resistance. She started out trying to help free her father by forging documents to show he should not be in Germany custody. The led to her sharing her artist skills with the resistance by forging documents for Jews fleeing from France. She know what she is doing is dangerous but she has to do what she can to help save lives.

Eva showed a lot of bravery during this story. She must go against her mothers wishes to forge documents. She has to be careful she is not spotted in the wrong place. Later in the book she helps the resistance in other ways. Some of the documents she forged are for children who had their parents taken away by the Germans. Determined to give the children a chance to reunite with their families after the war she works with her partner to crate a code in a book. She carefully records each name in the book hoping it will help.

Eva goes through so much in this book as I’m sure many did during this time. I think it’s wonderful that historical fiction books are written to help us remember the lengths people had to go to. I would highly recommend this book and Kristin Harmel’s other books to anyone who loves historical fiction.

I was unfamiliar with this author until I read this book. I will definitely be searching for other books by her. This book kept my interest and ended too soon. I wanted to find out more about some of the children that were introduced. It is horrific what those babies went through. I had never heard of the forgers during WWII but their work was so important.
Thank you Net Galley for providing me with an arc copy of this book.

Thanks to Gallery Books and Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

With all of the WWII historical fiction the last few years, I've found I've been getting fatigued but I really enjoyed The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel. Told through the viewpoint of a young Jewish women who escapes from Paris in 1942 to a small town where she starts forging documents to help children cross the border into Switzerland. She devises a code in a book to record the names of those children who she gives a new identity to. There are a few jumps to 2005 where as an older women she reads a news article about the Berlin librarians who have been trying to re-unite books with their owners and she sees the book where she recorded the names.

While I liked this book and the premise, I wish there had been more of the 2005. I love books with a dual timeline. Also at times Eva is quite naive and immature, which distract from the story, but overall I really enjoyed this and would recommend it, even to those who have read a lot of WWII historical fiction!

Kristin Harmel, author of four previous WWII historical fiction novels, draws readers in from The Book of Lost Name’s opening page. Eighty-six-year-old Mrs. Abrams, a part-time librarian, is dumbstruck when she sees “it”—a New York Times front page photo of a book she last laid eyes on when she was in her twenties, a book she thought had vanished forever, a book that meant everything to her. The headline accompanying the photo of a man holding a faded leather-bound book announces, “Sixty Years After End of World War II, German Librarian Seeks to Reunite Looted Books with Rightful Owners.” She thinks how the book once belonged to her—and to Rémy, a long dead man she vowed to never think of again after the war.

Knowing what she must do, elderly Mrs. Abrams buys a plane ticket to Berlin. She worries how she will tell her only son Ben that neither he nor her deceased husband Louis ever knew who she really was. Perhaps the time has come for Ben to learn.

The second chapter shifts from May 2005 to July 1942. Eva Traube, a French-born Jewish student in the English Department, is standing outside the main doors of the Sorbonne’s university library when a fellow student, Joseph Pelletier, warns her of an impending Nazi roundup of Paris Jews. When Eva’s parents refuse to listen to the warning, she and her mother escape capture only because they are called out of the apartment to help a neighbor. Her father is not so lucky.

Harmel gives us the story of Eva and her mother’s escape to a remote village in Southern France where they have heard the locals are helping Jews escape to neutral Switzerland. Rather than crossing the border, Eva joins a forger named Rémy, working to create fake documents to help orphaned Jewish children escape to safety. In addition to her artful forgeries, she soon begins keeping a coded record of the children’s real names in an old book in the church library where she and Rémy work.

The emotional and eventful novel has just begun.

In notes at the end of The Book of Lost Names, Harmel explains how she first heard about the forgers comprising part of the French resistance and how she got the idea to center her latest novel around an obscure old book in a small Catholic church library near the Swiss border.

Filled with suspense and based on history, The Book of Lost Names tells a fictional story of bravery and betrayal, of love and loss, of dangerous identities and changed identities, of losing one’s identity and finding it again.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Gallery Books/Simon and Schuster, and Kristen Harmel for providing an advance reader copy.

Honestly - I have been so deep in a romance mode that I really had to talk myself into reading this one. Come to find out, it was totally worth it. I was worried that a WW2 story would feel too heavy right now, but Kristin Harmel made this into a people story in the space of the war. I needed to know more about Eva and about Remy and about their families and the children. I was turning pages as fast as I could because the dual timeline of the war and present day were both so exciting to me. How she managed to make both story lines feel so compelling is remarkable. I am very excited to dig into her backlist now.

If you like Beatriz Williams and historical fiction with a good story to it, this is for you.

Thank you to Gallery for letting me read and review.

This is a very emotional story that you are not going to forget quickly.
Eva felt that everything was her fault when she really didn’t have any control over what was happening. The mother’s attitude even if she was stricken by grief was not been fair to her daughter and more than once she endangered her daughter and herself.
Eva was betrayed by a friend, who killed and informed the Germans on the movements of the resistance in order to save his own life. Many died on account of him.
We have the catholic priest who did everything possible to get the Jewish children to freedom assisted by the French women who risk their lives in doing so.
We have the collaborator (policemen) who turned in his own countrymen in order to be on the good side of the Germans and get promoted. In contrast the German soldier who understood how wrong everything had become ended up helping the priest.
Often because of all the confusion after the war people were not able to find out the status of their loved ones for many years and sometimes never.
This is historical friction. The characters and events might not be real in the true sense of the word but they represent real events and people during those war years.

Wow! Kristin Harmel has taken me on such an emotional roller coaster with The Book of Lost Names. So many times I caught myself jumping to the end of a page to get a glimpse of what was going to happen in order to brace myself as the story unfolded. Historical fiction and WWII are both favorites of mine, so I was drawn to this book that follows Eva Traube and her work as a forger for the Resistance. Harmel does a beautiful job of balancing love, fear, bravery, and adventure into a story that sweeps the reader away. The characters are ones that I will continue to think about.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced readers copy of this book.

Captivating read! Based on a true story, The Book of Lost Names are names of children that were changed to protect and save them so they could be safely and quickly relocated to a safe country during the war. Definitely worth another read!

First, let me say that I’d put this right up there as one of the best historical novels that I’ve read. The timeline goes between 2005 and the early 1940s. The latter is what the majority of the story is about, Germany’s occupation of France.

The story begins in 2005 in Florida where Eva Traube, 86, works at the local library. When she sees a newspaper story about a man in Germany who is returning rare books looted by the Nazis to WWII survivors. It nearly takes her breath away when she reads about it.

And with a bang, the story takes off.

Eva, the child of Polish-Jewish parents, was born in France. So when things start looking bad concerning Germany’s treatment of Jewish people, her parents hope Eva’s home country will make a difference.

As I mentioned, my interest was piqued immediately. In fact, I started reading in the evening and I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to shut the book.

Yet later, when I replayed the very first part of the book, the story was how the family was reacting to their fear regarding Germans. It felt familiar to other stories that we’ve all heard and read about. So my excitement about the beginning had to be due to Kristin Harmel’s incredible talent as an author. She was able to take this well-known history to new levels in order to create suspense, empathy, and interest.

The book will touch your heart and be a story that you are sure to remember. It flows with both fiction and historical facts intermingled beautifully. If you are interested in Women’s’ Fiction, WWII Historical Fiction, or Romance, I don’t think it’s possible to go wrong with this book.

What Concerned Me
Not a thing.

What I Liked
Harmel created characters that I understood through their actions, not because of her descriptions. They were believable and I was empathetic to what they were experiencing.

This is yet another author I will be following.

My thanks to Gallery Books and NetGalley for an ARC and the ability to post a review of my opinion regarding the book.

A beautiful story set in France, WWII, following a network of forgers helping smuggle people to safety.

There are a lot of historical fiction books written about WWII and I would definitely put this on your list to read. I thought it was very well written and very engaging. There are a few inconsequential flash-forwards to Eva, present-day, but it was very minimal and mostly there for the culmination at the end. This was not a hard-hitting, gritty WWII book as Eva was mostly on the fringes, removed from the worst of it. But nonetheless she was not spared from danger or heartbreak.

Also true to most good historical fiction, it makes you admire the bravery and ingenuity of the resistors- in this particular story, the forgers who figured out a way to produce false papers to smuggle people to and through borders to safety.

I loved the added element of Eva's coded book and namesake for this story that allowed her to record the true names of those whose identities had to be erased. Though not the intention of the author, I couldn't help but think about how, as Christians, we recognize that our true identity is found in Christ and that when we have found Him, our names are also written in a Book- the Book of Life. And what a beautiful confidence that is to know that your true self is known and kept and waiting for you to come Home.

Follow Eva and the Book of Lost Names on their journey through danger, love, and betrayal. You won't regret it.

**I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**