Publisher: Gallery Books

Published: July 6, 2021

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Source: Hardcover Public Library Books and Overdrive Audiobook (through Public Library)

Available Formats: Digital, Audio, and Hardcover

My Review: I started reading this book but found myself not as interested as I expected. Before giving up I decided to try the audiobook and I am glad I did. I found it much more engrossing. The narrator was excellent in character voices, the foreign language, and capturing the feelings of fear.

Just when you think there cannot be an untouched way to show the horrors and heroism of World War Two there comes a book that makes the reader gasp in surprise.

Goodreads: The New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis—until a secret from her past threatens everything.

After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest—and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything.

Inspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds, and suffused with the journey-from-the-wilderness elements that made Where the Crawdads Sing a worldwide phenomenon, The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel.