In writing this beautiful and important memoir, Julie Metz has done an outstanding job of merging her meticulously researched history with her grandparents' lives and her mother's childhood in Vienna before the Anschluss of Austria, and their lives after the Nazi-occupation of Vienna. Even though all this happened over eighty years ago, its subject is as relevant and problematic today as it was then. Not sure why Trump is in this book, though. 3/5.

I was very intrigued by the concept of this book but I did not enjoy this story like I had hoped to.

#Eva and Eve is a wonderful novel. Author # Julie Metz is such a talented writer. A gripping story of family. She recounts her mother's wartime experience. A feminist memoir of women's lives....
Thank you for the advance copy,
#Simon & Schuster, #Netgalley

This was a good memoir. It did feel a little out of sorts with the direction it wanted to go. I thought it was wonderful that the author was able to write this book in order to better understand her mother. I feel like the best memoirs are for both the author and reader, and I just found this one hard to connect to.

I enjoyed the historical aspect of this novel, but I felt like this book could've been a little bit shorter. The one thing that I really disliked was Metz's political opinion that was streamlined throughout the novel. Regardless of your political affiliation, this is an immediate turn off for me as a reader, and makes it hard for me to connect to the characters, or in this case, the author. I am always intrigued by anything WWII related, so I was drawn in by Metz's family history, but that was about it.

Metz traces the story of her mother's family fleeing Vienna in 1940. She was not particularly close to her mother so a chunk of her story had to be researched after her mother's death. I liked reading about the research and her travels to investigate. They escaped in March 1940, very late and were fortunate to escape. The one drawback to the book is the author had a tendancy to inject her opinions as fact pertaining to current events.

Quick and easy read. This book was very intrestjbg and kept me guessing until the very end.. the character building by the author was amazing.

grief, grieving, memoir***

The author's mother had totally walled off her personal history regarding her family's flight from Europe in the time of Germany's ascendancy and never revealed any of it to her children. Not unusual for those who came to America at that time, but this family never faced the horrors that happened to so many others and the writer seems to believe that only one segment of the immigrants faced discrimination once in America. That and pushing her own political agenda was a great disappointment to me. Grief twists the past, even when discovered rather late.
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Atria Books via NetGalley.

I was given an advance reading copy (arc) of this book by the publisher and NetGalley.com in return for a fair review. Going in to this book, I was under the impression that it was about the author's mother who, as a young child, escaped Vienna with her parents after the Nazi occupation, in other words an historical nonfiction book. Unfortunately, that is not what I found. It was part memoir on the author's side, which was very distracting, and much of Eva's story was fictionalized. In addition, the author chose to take various political jabs throughout the book, which jolted me right out of the story every single time. What genre was Metz trying to write in? Fiction? Nonfiction? Memoir? Political? I couldn't decide. Having said all of that, Metz is in essence a good writer. Her fictional chapters were well written and interesting. Her mother's story was also fascinating and well researched. Eva's escape was harrowing with many setbacks and unexpected twists and turns. She and her parents were lucky to have gotten out when they did. Suffice it to say that if the author had opted to write an historical novel about her mother's journey, it probably would have been stellar.

Eva and Eve by Julie Metz is an interesting examination on multiple levels of a forced immigration from Vienna to New York during the Nazi regime by a Jewish family. As the title alludes, a transformation from Eva, a Viennese young girl, to Eve, an American immigrant, is the focus. But, this book is much more, it examines the search for answers in a time of secrecy and the regret that comes when it seems all the doors are closed to you.

Metz undergoes a complex journey into the history of her mother and grandparents after their death. She is inspired by finding a keepsake book which is the impetus to begin a search that leads her back to her heritage in Vienna. Metz also makes multiple direct references to the stress of living in the United States in the current political climate and how she believes that relates to the Nazi regime. This makes the book a bit disjointed but I do agree that the world is full of uncertainty, just not sure the argument was fully fleshed out.

The underlying message of not knowing your roots and how that can stunt your current growth was detailed masterfully. Her devoted efforts and willingness to find answers in the face of tragic optimism were admirable, Her mother was a victim of circumstance, but did not allow that to color her whole life, she found a way to heal and ultimately to rise above her circumstances. We can learn much from her example, I am grateful for the opportunity to find ways to maintain hope and find meaning despite a life that is not easy as a mother to two special needs children. If you are looking for a similar inspirational book about resilience in the midst of hardship, I would recommend Eva and Eve.

I was provided a free advance reader copy from Atria Books in exchange for my honest review on Net Galley. The opinions shared in this review are my own.

****Coming April 26, 2021**** Thanks to Atria Books and Netgalley, I was chosen as an early reviewer.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Julie Metz writes a beautiful memoir about her mother’s life. It isn’t until her mother passes away from Cancer that she discovers the truths of her mother’s past of escaping Vienna Austria during the Nazis occupation and immigrating to New York. As this authors so eloquently puts it she knew Eve, her mother as an adult, while her mother was called Eva as a child, a person her mother kept hidden due to her horrific experiences as a Jew in Austria. This author takes the reader on her research journey to uncover the truths of her mother’s family’s past.

I struggled to finish this book. It was too long and the author included too many unnecessary details that dragged the story down. The book could be divided into three or even four separate stories: the author’s grandparents and mother’s escape from Austria during World War 2, the author’s various trips to Austria to research details of her family history, the author’s parents life after coming to America and the author’s personal feelings about the politics of the last 8 years. I felt the story needed more editing and revisions to hone it's purpose.

I was quite disappointed the author included her personal political biases. Not because I disagree with her viewpoints, but because it tainted the impact of the story. It made it more about her than about the story of her family. It felt indulgent on the author’s part.

Even though I enjoy WWII era memoirs about survival or escape, I would pass on this one. The second hand account didn’t quite embody what I think the author was trying to accomplish.

I received a free ARC copy from the publisher and net galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

The first half of this book was difficult for me to navigate through because I felt that the story jumped around a lot and I was becoming confused; It definitely took me awhile to read the first half of this book. The second half was amazing and I couldn’t put it down.

Julie Metz tells the story of her Grandfather, Grandmother, and her mother’s narrow escape from the Nazi’s in Vienna. This story is both amazing and heartbreaking at the same time. I was saddened at the unfortunate similarities between the current racism occurring in the United States and Hitler’s anti-Semitism views during WWII.

Overall this book was an eye opener and I highly recommend. Thank you Net Galley for the advanced readers copy of this book.

In “Eva and Eve,” memoirist Julie Metz pieces together details about her mother’s life before escaping Nazi-occupied Austria. In 1940, at age 9, “Eva” takes what she calls “the last boat out of Italy,” and emigrates with her parents to Brooklyn, New York.

Here in America, she builds her life as “Eve.” Yet rarely discusses her past. Then after Eve's death, Metz finds a hidden journal from 1940 that becomes the catalyst for this book.

In this memoir, Metz tells her mother’s (mostly) untold story of emigration. In doing so, Metz better understands her deceased mother. And their complicated mother-daughter relationship.

Metz writes, “Like many Jews of my generation, I’d grown up under a dark cloud of memory. Now I wanted to pierce the cloud and understand the Vienna my mother knew as a child, the terrifying years under National Socialism, and then her life as a wartime refugee and immigrant—to immerse myself in a way I hoped I could bear.”

While I enjoy many parts of this story, especially more toward the beginning, I find it much too long and at times. There are quite a lot of details as Metz’s attempts to reclaim her family history. Between the time that Eve passes in 2006, and when the book publishes (due April, 2021), so much time transpires. Thus, we bare witness to Metz’s life and research process of nearly 15 years. Call it Covid-overload, but this was a bit more to chew on than my attention span can handle at this point in 2020.

Thank you to NetGalley! I enjoyed this book as it presented a different story than the typical approach to WWII novels. It centers on the Author's path to gain information about her family's past in Vienna during WWII after the present loss of her mother. The book did a good job of showcasing why we should learn from our past and as a reader, I felt the author's emotions through descriptive writing and the story.

Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother's Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind from Julie Metz does what good memoir and history is supposed to do, revisit the past and bring it into conversation with the present. In this case the history and the journey are both personal and societal.

First of all, I have to vent about something I don't understand. How can one love to read about a specific time period or event (writ large) without some part of that being about what the past can tell us about the present or any possible futures? In other words, if one likes to read Holocaust stories but feels that bringing what they say into the present is beside the point, what exactly is the point? Do they simply get enjoyment from reading about other people's pain and suffering without learning anything from it? Okay, I'm finished, I just don't understand some things very well.

This memoir is ever so subtly layered while making many of the lessons, both personal and societal, very explicit. I was, of course, caught up in the dynamics of Metz' family history, how they handled a horrendous situation, how they managed to do what they did for their family. My interest, at first, was primarily historical through a personal lens, if that makes sense.

I found myself very quickly invested in her present as well, the wonderfully difficult task of raising a child, of coping with the curves life, in the best of times, can throw at you. At this point, I was as invested in her family life as I was in her mother's family life. The historical had become very personal and the personal is always political.

I found parts of the book more engaging than others but not in a like versus dislike way, more of a like and like a lot way. I also think that the writing is such that, when I reread this, I may well prefer other sections. Such is the nature of reading, it isn't simply the words on the page/screen, it is also where I am in my life while reading it, and where my society is while I am reading it. And right now the present feels surreal.

I would recommend this to readers who like to read about life under Nazi rule as well as those who like memoirs that highlight family dynamics and the many little epiphanies that make up a life.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

A very well detailed account of how we only learn the past our parents present. Eva and Eve is a beautifully written book about a woman trying to find the mother she always yearned for by looking through her past. It brings up many emotions whilst reading and stirs up your own thought about our own mother’s past.

This book was a different approach to childhood in Nazi ruled regime. This author finds similar feelings occurring in present times. Ms. Metz allows us along as she discovers there was more to her mom’s childhood than she knew. More that her mom tried to forget and why we should be learning from the past.

I voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book provided by NetGalley.

This book is beautifully written, rich with imagery. From the onset, I felt like I was reading this book with all five of my senses, immediately beginning to connect the to the story and this family, as they start peeking through the “dark cloud of memory” wondering how it will unfold. The readers is transported and discovers bit of puzzle pieces along with the protagonists, to be later compiled into a completed story that is the history of this family.
I loved reading this slowly, allowing the pictures to settle in my mind. But the story simultaneously pushed me forward to finish this lovely read.

This is a book I would recommend, especially as a book club pick. I love the unique juxtaposition on a topic and time that can feel over-written and repetitive.

I had high hoped for this one as I love both WWII and family memoirs, but it was hard for me to get into it, especially at the beginning. The beginning felt a bit fragmented and it was hard for me to keep track of what was going on. I enjoyed the middle the most, when the author is tracing her mother’s route from Vienna to Italy and felt that this part was the most organized and easy to follow. While part of me did enjoy the end relating to life and political climate today, is also felt like a tangent that had nothing to do with the rest of the story.

Overall I think this story has potential but the organization of it could have been better.