Having read other books by Roberta Kagan I was looking forward to this one and wasn't disappointed.

The story of four little girls, the pact they made and how life can change things in an instant. And set in Austria with war on the doorstep and plenty of innuendo about the Jewish people will these three girls be able to keep that pact going?

This story drew me in from the start and kept it interesting which I liked. With the addition of a girl that was included in the friendship but doesn't like Jews this adds a bit of tension to the story as well. This is their story and it flows well and makes you ant to keep reading so you can find out how it all ends.

It is a first book of a new series and I do look forward to what come next. This is a book that really brings to the fore friendship and the differences in these friendships and how they affect life and beliefs. It is certainly worth the read.

I liked this book a lot. I found it hard to put down and couldn't wait to see how everything worked out. Well, I have to wait a bit longer. It is part one of a series. Had I known that, I wouldn't have read it. I like to read the entire series at one time.
About the book itself. I enjoy WWII books, and this one was above average. It tells the story of four girls who make a pact to be friends forever. That is despite religious and economic differences. They do their best, but society intervenes. The writing is good. I found myself cheering for some of the girls and despising others.
I can't wait for the sequel to come out.
NetGalley gave me an advance reader copy. This review is my own opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

First of all, I think the cover of the book is amazing!
This was a great read that goes very quickly! The writing is not complex, so it is a 1-2 sitting read.
The story follows four girls ( “blood sisters”) from the 1930’s in Austria. Anna is from a wealthy Jewish family,which sets her apart from the other three who are from families facing financial struggles and family troubles.
As young girls, they make a pact in blood to always be there for one another. They go from 8 years old to teens very quickly in the story. The Nazis take over Austria during World War 2 and the girls face tensions of the war and within their friendships.
Anna's kind and tender heart and the acts of kindness she shows as a young child should be life lessons we all need in this world right now, so this work of Historical Fiction actually has alot of truth to it.
I found the character Dagna to be so annoying - the proof of a gifted and talented author who brought her to life so perfectly!
Looking forward to the next book in the series.

I was incredibly excited to pick this book up. I have relatives who are Jewish and novels set in the WWII time period are incredibly resonant to me. This time period also, almost by definition, tend to provide a lot of drama and conflict that it's easy to sink your teeth into.

The book opens with a bang in 1940, and if the first chapter were the only thing I had to go on I would have said this could surely be an international bestseller. In it, the main protagonist (Anna) and her family are discovered by the gestapo. I was immediately on the edge of my seat and dying to know what happens next.

Unfortunately what happens next is that we are taken back to Anna's childhood and her relationship with two friends, Elisa and Bernie, and one frenemy, Dagna (who bizarrely is not currently mentioned in the book description despite being a huge part of the story). We flash forward to the 1940 capture again only twice-- once about a third of the way through the book and once at the very end. These sections were gripping. The book ends on a cliff-hanger so amazing that it made me want to read the next book in the series, something I'd have said was unlikely 10 pages before.

Despite the problems I am about to describe, the book generally held my attention, and I think Kagan is a writer with solid ideas for plot and it's execution.

Unfortunately, all of the main characters but one were unlikable. Anna vacillates between almost too naïve to be believed and profoundly observant-- for instance she literally does not know that lesbians exist, and truly thinks an anti-Semite she's dating won't care once she tells him she's a Jew. But! as a child, she's able to divine that her maid is upset with her not for anything actually having to do with her, but because being around her makes the maid's daughter want expensive things. It was sometimes hard to feel like Anna was a real person.

In the meantime, Dagna is a raging anti-Semite, unbelievably manipulative, and cruel. Elisa is shallow, vain, and incredibly stupid, as well as disloyal. It was hard to feel any sympathy for them. Bernie was kind, principled, and level headed, but forgettable for much of the book, as the main focus of the book is Anna and she thinks far more about Elisa and Dagna.

While there's hope that some of the following points may be cleared up in the final print edition, the way the dialogue was written throughout was stilted and awkward. The characters all spoke to one another very formally and unnaturally, even for the time period. A lot of the text was repetitive or told instead of showing. For example at one point we are told Anna loves books; one sentence later we are told Anna loves to read. This could have been effectively shown by her regularly going to a library or reading, and in fact it was later, so this felt pointless. Descriptions were often simplistic. For example one character is simply described as having "a chubby face, bright blue eyes, and light brown hair". I don't think authors should wax poetic about every little thing, but it felt forced, not like I was coming upon information naturally in the course of the story.

A final pet peeve was that, whenever a Jewish character would say a Hebrew or Yiddish word out loud to another Jewish character, they would immediately verbally follow it with the English translation, as though another Jewish person would not know what the word goyim meant. I understand the desire for the audience to understand the dialogue but I think it would have been better to let them figure it out from context, or from another character's thoughts on the remarks made, or even, if necessary, from Google.

I would recommend this to fans of historical fiction set during WWII, and those who are all about a good cliffhanger.

Roberta Kagan is the author of over 30 books, most of them about World War II. In her own words Ms. Kagan says, “I am trying to reach out and touch many people, not with the message of the horrors but with the promise of hope.” She is very humble in her desire to tell the stories of the brave people of that time.
The Pact is set in Vienna in the time leading up to the War. It is about a group of young girls who decide to mix their blood to show that they will always be the best of friends, always available to help one another. Anna is Jewish. She goes to a Jewish school and her family is well-to-do. The other girls come from poor families and one of their mothers is the maid for Anna's family, which is how the girls met. The Pact covers the girls' relationships for ten years, beginning with the blood sister pact when they were eight years old and ending around the time of the Anschluss, Germany's annexation of Austria. It has a cliffhanger ending and there will be a second book about the group.
The story flows easily and the girls and their experiences are interesting. It at times seems as if it were written for a younger audience. The author quite often uses a narrative of a character's thoughts even though it is obvious to the reader what the character's emotions are. The four girls are a rather clichéd group - the smart girl, the pretty girl, the lesbian, and the bully. I felt that Anna, the Jewish girl, wanting to go to Berlin in 1939 and her parents encouraging it was far-fetched. They were aware of the bad feelings toward Jews and the bad things happening to Jews in Germany. All in all, though, the book was interesting and enjoyable. Thank you to NetGalley and Roberta Kagan Publishing for the ARC of the book.

In The Pact, Roberta Kagan follows the lives of four Austrian girls: Anna, a wealthy Jewish girl; Bernie, a supportive and kind friend; Dagna, a liar who manipulates her way into the group; and Elica, whose jealousy jeopardizes her friendships. The four girls, from vastly different backgrounds, grow up in Austria in the years between World War I and World War II; between growing up, the class differences, and Anna’s Jewish identity, their years-long friendship is pushed to the breaking point. Kagan seeks to bring the stories of groups persecuted by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s; though this constitutes a small part of the plot of The Pact, Kagan brings all four girls and her cast of minor characters to life. The friendship’s ups and downs and the individual stories drive the plot forward, and Kagan successfully brings this fascinating friendship to life in The Pact. The unique challenges each girl faces draws the reader into the story, and each reader can find something in Anna, Elica, Bernie, and Dagna to enjoy. Kagan’s prose and familiarity with the World War II period create a vivid environment and place the reader into the midst of pre-World War II Vienna and into this group of girls’ friendship.

Blood Sisters

Love, Sisterhood, Compassion, Jealousy, Bitterness and Forgiveness are all packed into this beautifully written story about four young girls. It's a story of growing up in a turbulent time, coming of age and realizing the differences that society places on people. How not only a difference in religion and culture, but also in social standing can often cause damage and even destroy relationships.

This story follows these four girls Anna (a girl from a wealthy Jewish family), Elica, Bernie and Dagna girls from poor Austrian families. Elica, Bernie and Anna are close friends in childhood, they form a group and they become blood sisters through a pact, they do not want to but they must include Dagna who wishes to be part of the group and is Elica's friend because she will tell Elica and Bernie's parents they are associating with the Jewish girl Anna.

The book is about the girls, it is about society and whether or not close relationships can stand the limits placed on them by society, by differences and by circumstances. The girls lives, loves and experiences in the takeover of Austria by Hitler's henchmen.

It was a story of friendship and of betrayal and of redemption. The story started off interesting and ended with a bang of a cliffhanger for the next book in the series. If you are looking for a new series to read I would recommend this one.

Thanks to Roberta Kagan for writing yet another great book , to The Book Whisperer for publishing it and to NetGalley for providing me with a copy to read and review.

Four young girls living in Vienna in the 1920's make a blood pact that they swear will bind them as sisters forever. Over the course of a decade, life changes drastically as WWII begins and their bond is tested in ways that could be lethal.

Anna, a wealthy Jewish girl, is hyper aware that there are many in Vienna who disapprove of 'her kind'. The daughter of her hoisemaid, Elica is absolutely beautiful and attracts a lot of attention, but struggles with the class divide between the two families. Sweet Bernie comes from a particularly impoverished family and is grappling with feelings of love that she doesn't know how to handle. Dagna may have forced her way into the blood pact, but this hasn't changed the extremely negative way she views Jewish people (including Anna). As these four unlikely friends face a changing political landscape, will they stick together or will their differences pull them apart?

I really enjoyed this book and thought the cliffhanger ending was incredible! I didn't see it coming and think that author Roberta Kagan has done a brilliant job at ensuring that the second book in the series will be one no fan will miss!

Occasionally I felt that the language spoken by the characters was almost broken English, or similar to someone for whom English was a second language, which only bothered me as the characters would be conversing in their own language and therefore there wouldn't be any language barriers.

Thank you to Netgalley, author Roberta Kagan and The Book Whisperer for this ARC copy to read and review.

Decent story, if very predictable. My only real issue with it is the dialogue. Absolutely none of it sounds natural. I think this book needs at least one more pass over by an editor. If not that then at least the author needs to read some of this out loud. I think that would would be very enlightening for her.

Anna, Bernie, and Elica have made a pact to be blood sisters for life. While they are from different socioeconomic classes, they don't let that stop them from being sisters for life. As life goes on, their differences become more prevalent which puts their bonds to the test.

I thought that the story was well written. The characters were not one dimensional and they showed growth. The plot was amazing. I cannot wait to read the next book.

This book will appeal to fans of historical fiction. It appears to be well-researched, but the writing style didn't grab me, which could just be a matter of taste.

This was a beautiful told story of childhood friendships and the effect of external factors, tainting the innocence of these relationships as the girls grow older, set with a background of the Holocaust brewing in Germany and Austria.

The story starts in 1940, with Anna and her family being discovered in their hiding place in a friend's attic and then moves back to the 1930's to focus on the blood pact between 3 friends and a fourth girl who bullies her way into the group. There is some focus on the Holocaust and the unrest that is stirring but largely the story focuses on the lives of the different girls and how religion and class divides and causes jealousy. Anna is the daughter of a rich factory owner who had previously escaped a precarious situation in another country with his wife. Elica is the beautiful daughter of Anna's housekeeper and the two have grown up together, becoming close friends. They become friends with Bernie in school with Dagna, who is a bully and hates Anna for her religion, rounding out the group. The story moves forward to the point where Anna's family is found hiding in the attic. I hadn't realised that there was a sequel and was quite confused with the cliffhanger and loose threads, but I need to have it as soon as possible because that ending was something else.

I loved how well Roberta shaped her characters, they were believable and reflective of how people justify their actions. Anna is a kind girl, willing to go to great lengths to help her friends but it is sad that this is only reciprocated by Bernie who seems to be her only true friend.

Overall, this was a good book and although I found some parts a bit rushed, it was a quick and easy read.

Note to readers, particularly those of South African descent, there was a discussion of a book called Heart of Darkness and although they did not agree with the opinions, they did mention the people being from uncivilized tribes but still deserving of kindness which I found quite condescending.

3.5 Stars rounded down

The Pact is the story of four girls growing up in Austria. Elica, Bernie and Dagna are living in poverty, the parents struggling to put food on the table. Anna lives in luxury in a Jewish household. They are brought together when Elica's mom needs to bring her to work at Anna's home. A blood pact was to make them blood sisters forever. They created what was supposed to be an unbreakable bond. Prejudice can destroy anything, even friendship.

The Pact is a story that takes place before and at the beginning of World War 2. I am grateful to the author for giving me a timeline by dating each chapter. Two girls from different sides of the city come together in 1929 not yet influenced by the prejudice that surrounds them. Much changes during from 1929 to 1940 when the story comes to an end.

The story reminds us that attitudes of World War 2 were there long before war broke out. Elica and Anna remain friends as they reach school age when differences become more apparent. Many citizens in Austria are becoming ugly. The hatred for the Jewish people is spreading. Adults opinions are becoming their children's opinions. The hatred grows with time making me sadder and sadder with each chapter I read.

I had forgotten how mean kids could be. It had never occurred to me that the Jewish people had to fear children almost as much as they feared adults. The Pact is a great reminder that anyone can act without care. The Pact was a very sad read especially knowing what the future held for the girls. The Pact illustrates how easily innocence can be lost.

3.5 / 5.0 Stars

This story is of four young girls who seal their friendship through a pact of sisterhood in their elementary school years. The story moves from 1929 Vienna to 1936 Berlin and reaffirms the universality of teenage angst and the associated emotional rollercoaster experienced as one passes through puberty and into young adulthood. The girls are of differing socio-economic backgrounds which, although initially matters not in their young innocent lives, eventually becomes more prominent and troublesome as they become aware of the darkening world through which they must negotiate. Yet, through it all, the thread of friendship ultimately binds them to one another in ways that one could never imagine. So begins "The Blood Sisters" series.

I'll be honest, the beautiful cover art of this book captured my imagination. Once I was into its pages though, the writing felt as though the story was intended for a younger audience than the cover might imply. There was a strong morality thread strung through the story as though its intent was instructing young readers on what is acceptable behavior and what are the common pitfalls to which young people often succumb. I noted a few historical inaccuracies which hopefully, were caught and corrected prior to publication.

This is a charming coming of age story, the setting of which just happens to take place in the years leading up to the Anschluss of 1938.

I am grateful to author Roberta Kagan for having provided a complimentary copy of this book. Her generosity, however, has not influenced this review - the words of which are mine alone.

Publisher: Roberta Kagan Publishing
Publication date: January 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1957207247

Thank you netgalley for this ARC. I am leaving an 100% honest review.

I will start off by sayibg WWII Historical fiction has become a favorite of my mine.

The pact managed to be different then the average story on the book shelves, but ended a bit abruptly. I aware that there is a second book coming (which makes me happy) but I do wish there was some sort of temp closure. I didn't feel fulfilled upon completion.

Still it was a wonderful done book that did an excellent job telling the story of 3 (four including Dagna) including back story.

Thank you to Netgalley and The Book Whisperer for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The Pact is the first book in Roberta Kagan’s new series, blood sisters, about the friendship between four girls in 1930s Austria. The book follows the friendship between Anna, a Jewish girl from a rich family, and her best friends, Elica and Bernie. At a very young age, they decide to form what they thought would be an unbreakable bond by becoming blood sisters. Dagna, the school bully who always follows them around, overhears them and manipulates her way into being a part of that bond by threatening to expose Elica and Bernie’s friendship with Anna.
As they grow up, their friendship faces a lot of challenges. Anna who comes from a rich family often finds herself the object of the jealousy of her friends especially Dagna, who hates Jews and feels that Anna doesn’t deserve all the material things she has.
As hatred for Jewish people rises even more in Austria and Germany, life for Anna and her family gets harder and more dangerous. Jewish families are being hunted down by Nazi soldiers and it’s too late for any escape plans.
I went into this book thinking it would be something different, but it turned out very quickly that it was mainly about the friendship between those four girls, which I didn’t mind. There were interesting and thought-provoking aspects about the situations Anna found herself in. The author managed to keep me invested in what happened to the characters; however, I started to have issue halfway through the book because, honestly, some of the characters’ reactions and decisions weren’t very realistic.
I finished the book in two days and I never felt bored while reading it. However, the writing was not my favorite aspect. The dialogue often felt infantilizing and unnatural. I didn’t like how the author always felt the need to spell out everything that was happening through the characters’ thoughts, even though it was obvious. Also, the shifting between the points of view was sometimes uncomfortable.
Throughout the book I was debating whether I would continue reading the sequel, but the cliffhanger at the end left me no choice and I can’t wait to have certain things explained in the second book.

This is a novel set before the beginning of WWII in Austria. Three girls, one Jewish, two Gentile, who make a blood pact to remain friends always. A difficult (yet noble) idea given the times they live in and what is happening during those years. I have read for many WWII books I find it rather boring to get through them. Most of the themes are all the same, the hatred of the Jews, the Jews all have wealth, and then we have the Germans, not so much wealth (hard to believe) and their basic hatred of those who are not Aryan. So it goes as these books keep pouring out. Not that one should forget the Holocaust, however, for me I doubt I will keep reading these books, I've had enough. Three stars from me because I know what it takes to research and write. There is enough history in the world, couldn't someone pick another topic?

The actual rating is 4.5
This is a story about friendship and I really enjoyed it. It makes me curious about the historical references, the writing was on point, really loved the way the author wrote this story and the evolution of the characters was really great (except for Dagna). The story is very interesting and the cliffhanger at the end made me want to read the next book, so I'll be sure to pick up the next one in this series.

Set during WWII these 3 women stand by each other through it all. This is a quick read, but deals with a heavy topic.
Another good historical fiction set during WWII.
While I did like it, it's not my favorite about this time period.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC.

I immensely enjoyed reading this book. The story revolves around friendship, sisterhood, love, betrayal and above all life in general. I loved the way of writing. This is my first book from the author and I definitely look forward to reading more.