I honestly don’t think I have read a book in this fashion and don’t know if the opportunity will arise again. I am grateful to have done so. It brought a whole new image to something I thought I knew pretty well.
Well done Mr. Slater!

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

Well, as a holocaust educator, I was worried at first. I am not a fan of a certain children's book and going into this, I was skeptical to say the least. But wow. Cleverly done. The author somehow blends the fiction and the history. Poignant and deserves to be read.

4⭐⭐⭐⭐




- first book read from this author and did not dissapoint . it gotten be hooked from the first chapter .
i think the ending was lacking and need more answer but probably best if there is a season 2 for this and it will be answered . well recommended thriller!

+thankyou netgalley for the opportunity

❤️shaye.read

Sophie Siegel has moved multiple times in Germany as her family has witnessed Jewish rights decline and anti-Semitism rise. Ortschaft became home in 1940. Sophie is devastated when she cannot attend school. As life worsens, Sophie is left to protect her young best friend Gideon "Giddy" Goldfarb. In this vivid and emotional novel, Sophie witnesses Nazi Germany's intention to exterminate her people, from being taken to the local Ghetto to being sent to a concentration camp.
Historical fiction and magical realism by David Michael Slater will move you. All Holocaust books are significant but many are redundant. No Vanishing. The author's raw, hard-to-read style is captivating. Slater writes brilliantly, and the characters are complex. Seeing this hatred and brutality through a child's eyes is sad. I recommend this book to adults and high schoolers despite its difficult parts. It's a quick read at 200 pages. These pages contain so much.

Thank you so much to #Netgalley and the publishers for this advanced reader's copy for an honest review.

Absolutely beautiful story. The story of Sophie come to life with every step she takes through the horrific timeline of WWII Germany. This is not an easy read but one that is a must so that we may not forget the past. The story of so many that were sniffed out live on in the these pages and a living light to those who were lost but not forgotten. May your memory be a blessing!

"The Vanishing" by David Michael Slater is a fictional story about the Holocaust.. This may be a fictional story but for anyone that knows anything about the Holocaust you will see the events have a real meaning to them. While not everyone has or had a guardian angle like Sophie, the wish is there that many that surived did have an angle on thier side. The main story is about Sophie looking out for Giddy when he is transported to the camps, but underneath is the other stories about things that took place, and people that committed horrible acts. This was a very interesting read that grabs at your heart. The is was a wonderfully written book that leaves an imprint on your heart.

This was a great twist on a World War 2 war story. Inexplicably, Sophie, a Jew has become invisible during a horribly traumatic event. She follows her fellow Jews from their town, to the ghetto, and finally, to the concentration camp. She witnesses terrible atrocities at every step along the way. We see what the Jewish people were subjected to from the eyes of this child. Sophie used this strange gift to help her people as much as she could. Such a sad, but heartwarming, eye opening story. Definitely recommend to anyone who is looking for a great war read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Vanishing is a short story from a teenage Jewish girls (Sophie) POV. The scene is set during the Holocaust. With that said, this is not a light read. However, the book is targeted to YA and I think would be great addition to have in the library and classroom. Also, a good read for adults. Slaughter is a great storyteller. My first and not last read by him. This book contains murder, rape, torture, heartbreaking, gruesome, and unconditional love within families and friends.
Sophie is hiding in the closet when the Germans invade her house and murder her parents. She soon discovers she is invisible. She uses her gift to aide her neighbor friend Giddy. Being invisible still causes unwanted harm in the events to help Giddy survive.
A tale with many sides and been told over again. Slaughter brings this to a different level with magical realism.
Thank you NetGalley and Library Tales Publishing for ARC in return for my review.

This book is stunning in both senses of the word. It left me feeling from the horror but amazed by how well the author handled the terror of the holocaust. My teenage granddaughter sobbed her heart out over this book and said that it was the best historical novel she had ever read.

Losing her family to the Nazis in the Holocaust, teenage Sophie uncountably finds herself invisible, but is determined to save her best friend Giddy from the same fate. Otherworldly and mystical, this author somehow brings the events of the Holocaust to life without a lot of the brutality and cruelty that happened. Well written and it will make you think, and perhaps look for other books by this talented author.

A story unlike any other I’ve read, The Vanishing is a remarkable telling of the most horrific event in history, the Holocaust, using a style which is original, captivating and brutally honest.

The Vanishing is a heartbreaking tale of Sophie, a young teenager who loses her family in the Jewish genocide at the hands of Nazi Germany. As she witnesses the murders of her parents, hidden in a wardrobe, she realises she is no longer visible to anyone, including her best friend, Giddy. With her newfound invisibility, she resolves to save Giddy from all the terrors waiting to fall upon them.

As a fan of cross-genre writing, I was curious to see how the writer would blend historical fiction with magical realism while also dreading what if this playing around with fantasy elements lightens the gruesomeness of the Holocaust and makes a mockery of it. David Michael Slater must be proud of himself for working out the technique to convert something this horrifying into a fascinating coming-of-age story while also not deviating from the authenticity of the horrors the Jews went through.

This book is in no way meant for light reading even though the main characters are teenagers and are too innocent to be true. It is full of graphic details of the heinous atrocities these kids witness around them, from murders to rapes and various other kinds of torture. That said, the author does a great job of translating all this despair to hope and balances out the grimness with love and kindness. Since the tone is primarily YA, it can be a good addition to children’s literature at schools and public libraries. Yes, the subject matter is traumatic, but the tone makes it easier to read. Besides, history should be accessible to all ages.

My experience could have been better as a reader had there been an adult POV character. I hated to see Sophie make thoughtful decisions only to land in more trouble.

Overall, powerful, gripping and heartbreaking.

4/5🌟.

TW: Holocaust. Period.

I've finished a few Holocaust reads, and unfortunately, this one wasn't for me. It did have some good points though, I was a quick read and I actually ended up liking Sophie. That's where it all ended for me.

A YA fiction set around the holocaust is not an easy sell, but this author has done a fantastic job of it. I really liked the way it was executed and how everything played out.

It was both a tale of heartbreak and sorrow, but also of hope and love. The undying love of family and friends, the hope that things will work out in the end.

It is a beautiful story of friendship through a horrific time, and the author has done well to show what I think is a pretty accurate depiction of some of the goings on back then. I’m not going to lie, some brutal things happen and it can be hard to read, but at the same time, I didn’t want to put it down.

Highly recommend.

Sophie Siegel has moved several times throughout Germany as her family has seen the rights of fellow Jewish residents diminish and anti-Semitism rising to new heights. In 1940, they settled in the small town of Ortschaft. Sophie is heartbroken when she can no longer go to school, something she loves. Life soon gets much worse, and Sophie finds herself on her own hoping to keep her young best friend Gideon “Giddy” Goldfarb safe. From being transported to the local Ghetto established to contain the area's Jewish families to the deportation to a concentration camp, Sophie sees the continued horrors of Nazi Germany's plan to eliminate her people in this vivid and moving story.

David Michael Slater has utilized historical fiction combined with magical realism to tell a tale that will leave you deeply affected. All books about the Holocaust are important yet many feel repetitive. Not The Vanishing. The author has taken such a unique approach to telling this story, which is often raw and hard to read yet extremely compelling. Slater is an excellent storyteller, and the characters are all well-formed and complex. Having all this evil and brutality seen through the eyes of a child is beyond heartbreaking. Even with some very tough parts to get through, I highly recommend this book to adult readers as well as high schoolers. It's a short book (just under 200 pages) and moves quickly. Yet there's so much packed into these pages. Don't miss it.

One of the hardest books I have ever read! The Holocaust was so pointless and brutal that the shock factor is expected. With this book, Slater took it to a whole new level depicting the atrocities with violent graphic truth. Some of the graphic scenes I had no idea had happened and my stomach and heart hurt with this unforgivable genocide mission.

The main character Sophie brings to light the embarrassment as a child wearing the Yellow Star of David the first time to school. Bullied and banished from their classes, their lives had changed by Hitler's orders. While she is celebrating her 11th birthday with her mom and papa, the Nazi troops shattered their door. Her papa had enough time to hide her away in a closet. The troops shot her dad, then raped and killed her mom. The closet door was opened by the commander revealing her hiding.
Her best friend Giddy and all the other Jews in the neighborhood were transported by train to the Ghettos. When Giddy looks for Sophie, you realize she can see him, but he cannot see her. My thoughts were she must be dead and sent to be his guardian angel throughout the rest of the book.

Throughout the book, she protects him and others by stealing food and medical supplies while sneaking in and out of the Ghettos. The horror she sees will be etched in my mind forever. As if I were seeing it all firsthand, I was sickened by the torture and dehumanizing a person endured. The book warns that the scenes are not for the faint of heart or sensitive stomachs...I felt both of these. I've never seen it as clearly as I have with this author's depiction.

The atrocities, failures, mistakes, violence, terror, brutality are all unforgettable and may we never repeat this chapter in history again.

Thank you NetGalley and Library Tales Publishing for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Sophie is a preteen Jewish girl living in Berlin at the beginning of WWII. Before the Nazis kill and imprison her family and neighbors, she befriends a ten year old boy named Giddy and vows to protect him. When the unthinkable happens to Sophie’s parents, she hides and for reasons that she doesn’t comprehend, she becomes invisible. Since no one can see or hear Sophie, she manages to follow Giddy on his journey to the Jewish ghetto, the concentration camp, into hiding with the partisans and back to Berlin and is able to intervene in “invisible” ways to help Giddy and get him to safety as well as engage in her own revenge for the atrocities suffered by her family and people.
Well, I had “sworn off” WWII novels because I had read some recent historical fiction around this time period that were just too far fetched. Of course, an invisible Jewish girl as a protagonist is pure fantasy but I found this book to be cleverly written and provided information on aspects of the war that I knew very little or nothing about. The content is very tragic so this is not light reading. The sections of the book were labeled with titles such as The Ghetto, The Camp, The Woods and so on and I gained new information about the places that the German Jewish people were forced to live in before being exterminated and about the Jewish resistance partisans who operated in secret. The ending of the book was unexpected and definitely bittersweet. I highly recommend this very different and interesting story.
Thanks to NetGalley and Library Tales Publishing for the Advanced Reader Copy.

Thank u for the opportunity to preview the vanishing.
This is more of a historical suspense novel.
For me, I struggled thru the book but it is well written

3 stars

Eye opening and educational for history lovers. A real page turner! Highly recommend this interesting book!!

4 stars. I never really thought my love of historical fiction would ever be crossed by magical realism, but hey, here you have it! A hauntingly beautiful read that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early peek at the novel. My views are my own.

The vanishing David Michael Slater
David Michael Slater has a excellent book in "The Vanishing". Reading about the holocaust is hard to read sometime, but " The Vanishing " shows you that people were strong in times of adversity.

The connection between Sophie and Giddy was touching. Even during all the hard times Sophie was there to protect him and others.

The Vanishing will pull you in from the very beginning and you will not be able to put it down!

I recommend this book to family and friends

I received this complimentary copy from the publisher for a honest review. All thoughts and opinions are mine and mine alone.