Review: Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

Title: Rose Under Fire 
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Published September 10th 2013 by Disney Hyperion
Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction, WWII
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I am seriously ashamed of myself right now, because I am realizing that, six months after I read this beautiful, amazing book, I am just about to publish the review I wrote so long ago. And I seriously hope someone else did her job and made you all grab this book before today because books with this amount of heart-breaking, earth-shaking power don’t come often.

Elizabeth Wein wrote a powerful story. Even if it’s fiction, the characters come across as such incredibly three-dimensional people that is hard to think there weren’t more women like them inside and out of every concentration camp in Europe during World War II. I know that there are a lot of unknown Rose’s somewhere in this world and this book makes me want to toast to all of them. We have to believe this because all the evil had to be neutralized somehow, and brave hearts like this girls’ ones make me stand for what I believe in today.

The friendship that blossomed between Rose and the other prisoners drove me to the edge. It brought me jealousy and glee and tears and I really enjoyed reading about it. And of course my heart broke at their obsession with food :( I can’t even handle it right now, months after I read the book. The courage and the hope that these ladies show makes all the reading about the awful things the Germans did in their camps, they make it all worth it.

And it makes me wonder if the reason some of them survived was because they had each other. I don’t know. I just know that this book is wonderful and it set my heart on fire. And the writing and the characters will move you, and I’m sure this story will turn into one of your most beloved ones. Like it happened in my case. A favorite of mine for sure.