Set immediately after WW2 with flashbacks to Weimar Berlin, Bertie was AFAB and has spent the war living on a farm with his wife, assuming the identity of his friend's deceased grandfather. Now that the war is over things look marginally brighter, until they find out that the Allies are not releasing the LGBTQ prisoners the same way they are Jewish prisoners. Bertie has always dreamed of a life where his existence would not be simply tolerated, but accepted, now he wonders where in the post war world he can even be safe. This is a beautiful and unparalleled story of hope, loss, love, and fear. The fear really resonated, which is proof of good writing but also may be a bit difficult to read in the current climate. The reader was well modulated and engaging. The background of the story is very well researched and it seems that the author strove for historical accuracy.

This book broke my heart in the best way. The Lilac People is one of those rare historical novels that feels both deeply human and urgently necessary. I’ve read a lot of WWII fiction, but I’ve never seen a story like this—centered on a queer, trans man in 1930s Berlin. Milo Todd gives us a powerful, character-driven story that doesn’t flinch from the horrors of history but still finds space for tenderness, love, and resilience.

Bertie is a character I won’t forget anytime soon. His journey, the found family around him, the tension of trying to live authentically in a world that refuses to see you—it all felt so real and relevant. The writing is strong but never showy, and you can feel the care and research behind every page.

It’s heavy, yes, but it’s also beautiful. If you like historical fiction that focuses on voices of the forgotten and tells the stories that usually get left out, this one’s a must-read.

This story tells such an important one, one that is not typically covered in World War II historical fiction. This is a story that needs to be told, and it is told so well. I really enjoyed the narrator.

The beginning of was a bit slow but I’m so glad I kept going. This incredible story about the history of LGBTQ community during world war 2 blew me away. This is a must read. The audiobook is around 9 ish hours not too bad but it honestly brought the story to life for me. I felt as if I was there. I felt their grief, shock, and joy. I can’t recommend this enough

I got this as an audio arc on Netgalley and it has since come out. This was a beautiful book beautifully narrated. It absolutely broke my heart. Especially since history is repeating itself. This is a book about being queer and trans in WW2 but also after. Queer people weren't freed after the war ended. Expect it to be brutal. I cried a lot.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
An urgent, unforgettable story — brilliantly narrated and beautifully written.

The Lilac People is one of the most powerful historical fiction audiobooks I’ve ever listened to. It’s an extraordinary and necessary story that shines a light on a chapter of history that’s rarely given space in WWII narratives — the brutal persecution of queer and trans people before, during, and after the Nazi regime. Milo Todd’s debut is devastating, important, and deeply human.

Set across dual timelines — one in pre-war Berlin, where queer and trans communities experienced fleeting freedoms, and one in post-war Germany under Allied occupation — this novel follows a transgender man named Bertie and his found family as they navigate love, survival, identity, and injustice. Inspired by real events and people, including the work of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institute for Sexual Science, the story is both historically rich and emotionally resonant.

The writing is tender and immersive, and the characters — especially Bertie, Sofie, and Karl — are vividly drawn and easy to root for. There is so much heartbreak here, but also hope and moments of joy. The narration by Max Meyers is excellent, with distinct voices and emotional depth that made me feel like I was right there with these characters. I found myself thinking about them long after the audio ended.

This book is also strikingly relevant to today’s political climate. The parallels between 1930s Germany and the rise of transphobia and nationalism in the present day are impossible to ignore. Todd doesn’t shy away from that — instead, he confronts it with clarity and compassion.

If you think you’ve read every kind of WWII story, think again. The Lilac People is a vital reminder of the lives and histories too often erased — and of the need to remember them, especially now. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This is a really interesting and unique story set before and after WW2 in Germany, focused on an impacted population that is not often discussed in regards to this part of history. Sadly, this book highlights so many parallels to the current day. So many situations in this book are extremely scary and sad. The characters are all believable and lovable, I was rooting for them throughout. The bright moments and memories in this book felt so vibrant and alive.

This is a WW2 story unlike any I’ve ever read. Being centered around a transgender man and his struggles with identity, the war, and so many other things gives a unique and devastating perspective to readers. I loved the two timelines, it gave a lot of depth. The writing style was so well done as well!

The Lilac People (2025) – Milo Todd
I highly recommend this debut work of historical fiction by Milo Todd. I nearly put this one aside because I’ve read my fill of Holocaust and Nazi stories. But this one is inspired by real events and a group of Hitler victims that haven’t gotten much attention: gays and transexuals, or as they are described in the book from language of the 1930s: Inverts and transvestites. The story arcs from pre-war and pre-Hitler Berlin, when the group enjoyed a modicum of freedoms depending on the mood of police, to post-war Ulm, Germany, where a trans man, Bertie, and his girlfriend, Sofie, were hidden from the Nazis by an elderly couple on a farm. Hitler’s first targets in his quest for Aryan purity were members of the queer community, as it was called then. After he rounded up as many as he could and sent them to Dachau, he turned his focus to the Jews. In 1945, while liberating the rest of the country, American soldiers were arresting gays and transexuals. Ironically, as the soldiers – one in particular – closed in on Bertie and Sofie and a younger trans man they found near death on their farm after he had escaped Dachau, to evade arrest by the Americans, they had to flee to the United States. This is book is cleverly constructed with its dual timelines, and the writing is beautiful. Very satisfying. Very much worth reading.

This book was equally heartbreaking and emotionally moving. It touched me deeply. It expresses a side of the holocaust often silent—the transgender experience. The characters are strong and deeply fleshed out. The story was well paced and kept my attention while educating me on the views of transgender individuals during WW2. I became deeply attached to the tender characters and rooted for them until the end. It was a wonderful story that isn’t traumatizing while covering very dark subject matter. I highly recommend this one! So unique and touching!!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the ARC of this book. I enjoyed it greatly and can’t wait to read Milo Todd’s next book!

Gah! So many thoughts….so many feeling. All positive! This is such a heartbreaking,important story which resonates all the more today, in these times. Really hoping that more people are inspired to look into Magnus Hirschfield and his work after this. He’s an oft forgotten yet, hugely important historical figure of the period.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the audio arc!

'When a person encourages the suffering of another you can bet they won't stop there.'

How sadly prescient for the times we're currently living in.
Historical fiction focusing on a trans man in 1930s Berlin before and during the rise of the Nazi party, and after the war in allied occupation rural Germany. We go from a period of relative liberties for queer and trans people, to extreme persecution, which continued to some extent after the war ended.
This was an incredibly eye-opening account for me, as I had ashamedly never considered how life would be post-war for queer and trans people.
It was very moving, and I listened to the audio which was narrated excellently.
I feel like this is an essential read, both in terms of the cautionary nature of what can and what has happened, and also in how it portrays trans joy.
Very glad I picked this up.

Well, that was about as upsetting as I anticipated.

I don't read much contemporarily-written WWII fiction. There's so much of it, and I feel like a lot of the work I have read misses the point, often by glamorizing US heroism rather than acknowledging the systemic issues at play that made the US complicit both in terms of Hitler's rise to power and in high-level decision-making that often targeted the same people that we mythologize ourselves as "saving." (And don't get me started in the "I Can Fix Him" romance trope.)

"The Lilac People" focuses heavily on the work of Magnus Hirschfeld. I feel like the author took the approach of assuming that readers don't know much about Hirschfeld and his work around the study of human sexuality. My primary, and perhaps only major, complaint with this book was how very much time it spent on, in my view, overexplaining the work of the institute. Then again, I'm already familiar with the history, so what read as didactic to me might be a person's first introduction to the Institute, in which case the context and information could be really helpful! That's a tough balance to strike in historical fiction. For me, the frontloaded infodump made it hard to connect to the characters at first, because they felt like vehicles for information. That changed as the story progressed.

Beyond that, I love how the book grappled with the conflicting cruelty and kindness of humans, and many other issues that, unsurprisingly, are extremely relevant to 2025 in the US, which I presume is the target readership for this work. Many people have rightly made the connection between transphobia and nationalism, and the long history of eugenics both in this country and abroad. When you see it, call it out: gender essentialism is some Nazi sh*t.

I listened to the audiobook, which was read very well, and I realized at the end that I'd been anglicizing the character names in my head the whole time. So: Bertie, Sofie, and Karl's stories (hope I've got those names right now) acknowledge the complexity of several groups of non-Jews targeted by Hitler and his supporters, groups whose suppression and extermination don't get talked about as much in general conversations about WWII, and who remain socially and politically vulnerable in the US to the present day. As least when I was growing up, there was a huge focus on German antisemitism but less acknowledgement of the treatment of queer, disabled, Roma, and other "undesirable" demographics. Trans and queer folks were among the first groups to be targeted by the Third Reich, and there's a strong link between German history and the US present. Todd draws clear connections between the two.

So basically, this book is heavy AF, but I wish more people would read it and remember/learn how many of the hateful messages being parroted today are closely linked to a time we do NOT want to repeat.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the audio ARC of this book.

4 Stars

This is a story of a trans man during WWII in Germany. The story is beautifully told and was so sad. I wish I had a physical copy of this one to read along with the audiobook. I did catch myself getting confused a few times and having to go back. I normally love listening to books but this is one I think I would of liked to read with my eyeballs.

Thank you to Dreamscape media and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this book.

This book was both heartbreaking and hopeful. There is so much I didn’t know about the transgender during WW2 that this book had me researching, and it’s disheartening. This story shines light onto those dark chapters in history that are untold. I was lucky enough to listen to the audiobook and the narrator was flawless. I felt for all the characters and had to pause in certain chapters as it is graphic. Due to the nature of the content be warned, but despite of it I couldn’t stop listening. I felt such despair and drew a big sigh at the end.

I want to thank @NetGalley and @dreamscape_media for allowing me to listen to this impactful story.

The Lilac People by Milo Todd is a Historical Fiction novel describing the journey of the Lilac People (transgender and queer individuals), before during and after WWII. We learn about the Weimar Republic, the Lilac People’s community, where they were free to live openly prior to WWII and the persecution experienced during Hitler’s reign and immediately at the end of the war by the Americans. Readers of the Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly will enjoy this book.

The Narration by Max Meyers was well done, giving unique and distinct voices to each character, making the narration easy to follow.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media for the opportunity to listen to this ALC. All opinions are my own.

Audiobook Rating: 4 Stars
Pub Date: Apr 29 2025

Tags:
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#TheLilacPeople
#MiloTodd
#LGBTQIAP+
#HistoricalFiction
#WWIIFiction
#YarisBookNook
#netgalley

The Lilac People by Milo Todd is a magnificent historical fiction novel set after the liberation of the camps of WWll. However, the story of persecution continued for those who were transgender and other queer people. They were forced to serve out their wartime sentences for homosexual activity and this is where the story of The Lilac People is told.


This story is based on actual events. I was unfamiliar with these events as well as the Institute of Sexual Science led by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and Weimar Republic - the Weimar Republic, queer Berliners were able to live rather openly. Institute of Sexual Science was the first sexology research center in the world. It provided sex education and health clinics, advice on contraception, and research on gender and sexuality, both anthropological and psychological. It got legally accepted “transvestite” identity cards for its patients, intended to prevent them from being arrested for openly dressing and living as the opposite sex. The grounds also included room for offices given over to feminist activists, as well as a printing house for sex reform journals meant to dispel myths about sexuality. If the Nazi’s did not destroy the institute and burn the books etc, oh what could have been and how this community could have grown openly and freely.

I am sure I am not the only one who sees similarities to current events in the 21st century.
Max Meyers did a fabulous job narrating the audiobook with distinctive character voices, accents, and dialects.

Thank you to NetGalley and Counterpoint Press for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I've read many books about the Holocaust that they can sometimes blend together. The Lilac People will not be one of them.

History books tell us that the LBGTQ+ community was one of the populations targeted during the Holocaust. They are often glossed over, as much of LGBTQ+ history is. This includes what happened to them after the Allies freed other minorities from concentration camps: the cruel reality that not everyone was free. While American soldiers were viewed as the heroes of World War II, they were not much better than Hitler when it came to their treatment of the queer community. Milo Todd's story was honest and didn't pull any punches when it came to the U.S.'s role in erasing the community no matter where they lived.

Todd did an incredible job of developing these lovable characters in Bertie, Sofie, Karl, and Gert. There was so much risk in living as your true self during this time, but they never wavered. Going back into the closet was not an option, no matter how much it risked their safety. The emphasis on queer history and their legacies was woven into every page. The ending was so bittersweet, a perfect balance between joy and heartache.

If you are interested in queer history or just looking for a different perspective on WWII than most other books on the topic, read this book.

This book was a heart pulling look into the world of the LGBTQ+ community during World War 2.

The novel has so many well developed characters and their stories are devastating stories of survival and resiliency.

The story has a dual timeline in Berties life, beginning in Berlin in the early 1930's and then in the time immediately after the Allies had gained control over Germany. It's hard to not give away a lot of the plot but Bertie finds his queer community, only to have them attached and ostracized by Nazi Germany.

I found reading this now, at the beginning of 2025 to be especially impactful as we consider how government treats those around them that they don't consider like them. It's a hard read, please be gentle with yourself.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced audio of The Lilac People by Milo Todd.

This audio was moving, heartbreaking, and ultimately scary how close our current world seems to be. It was eye-opening to read about pre-WWII Germany and the work that was being done to help the LGBTQ community and how fast that all went downhill because of Hitler and his followers. A great WWII story and history that was unlike any I've ever read.