Title: The Rebel Girls of Rome
Author: Jordyn Taylor
Genre: Historical Mystery, LGBTQ+, with a bit of Romance
Format: 🎧
Narrators: Jennifer Jill Araya and Jesse Villinsky
Publisher: Harper Audio Children’s/Harper Collins
Pub Date: July 8, 2025
My Rating: 4.4 Stars
Pages: 320

Story is told from the POV of two girls
Bruna - then WW2
Lilah - Present

Then: ~~ Bruna is a nineteen year old Jewish young woman living Jewish quarter in Rome during the Holocaust which is under Nazi occupation. Then her greatest fear happens in that she is separated from her family.
She is able to join the underground rebellion.

Now: ~~~ Lilah is a Hamilton College student who is grieving the loss of her mother and wants to know more about her life. Her grandfather doesn’t want to talk about it.
Lilah gets an email from a student named Tommaso who lives in Rome and tells her that that while he was helping his grandmother sort out things after his grandfather died. He
found a locket hidden along with a note and it indicates it might be her lost family heirloom. He included photo as well as a picture of the note. She shows it to her grandfather and he immediately has tears in his teas. She asks him if he will accompany her to Rome to meet with the young man.

Lilah and her grandfather are in Rome in hopes of discovering their family's story.

Aww This was great- I totally enjoyed it. The audiobook narrators are awesome at perfuming the characters- in English as well as Italian.
My father’s family were born and raised in Italy. They moved to the States before he was born. Most of the family settled in Philadelphia .
My grandfather was a farmer so settled in a small Pennsylvania farming community.

Additionally - I also loved Ms. Taylor’s “Author’s Notes” where she tells us what parts of her story were fact and which parts she embellished.
She points out that when the chapters were about WWII, that Nazi wasn’t used but referred to as Germans. I never noticed that in other books but will now.

She tells us about her inspiration and how she did research to make is as accurate as possible. I am not big fan of reading WWII stories as it was such a terrible time.
The LGTB parts of the story were interesting as I am sure no other Historical Fiction I have read included it.
Thank you Ms. Taylor for an enjoyable read!

Want to thank NetGalley and Harper Audio Children’s/Harper Collins for this great audiobook.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for July 8, 2025