*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity. This review is being posted as part of the The Girl With The Red Ribbon blog tour hosted by Rachel's Random Resources.
Title: The Girl With The Red Ribbon
Author: Carly Schabowski
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: ★★★★
1939, Poland. An extraordinary young woman
vows revenge on the Nazis after her family are murdered…
Ania hears the explosion of gunshots before
she sees the Nazi soldiers approach her beloved home. Her family don’t have
time to run, but she does. Hiding nearby, she listens to her sister’s screams
and – stroking the red ribbon she keeps tied around her wrist – she begins to
plot her revenge…
Taunted her whole life for being smarter than
anyone else in the village, now living in war-torn Poland, being governed by
Nazis who think Poles are subhuman and women only good for one thing… Ania now
only has her wits to rely on, if she's going to survive.
But then she comes across a group of misfits
all rejected by the resistance movement for bringing too much risk with them –
a scarred Jewish man, a madwoman, a gypsy, and a quiet, handsome Russian
soldier. And Ania realizes she alone has the power to unite them. Together,
they will destroy each and every one of the people who took everything from
her.
The Nazis have no idea what – or who – they
are up against. And they’re about to discover that no one should cross a woman
who has nothing to lose…
Inspired by an incredible true story from the
author’s own family, comes an absolutely gripping story about courage and
sacrifice in the darkest days of war.
The Girl With The Red Ribbon is the latest
novel from historical fiction author Carly Schabowski. This is an incredibly
powerful story exploring themes of courage, found family, resilience and survival.
This was my first time reading anything from Carly Schabowski
but she is a truly marvellous storyteller and incredibly talented wordsmith. Symbolism
is used throughout the book in a really powerful way and I particularly liked
the focus on wind being something which brings life but also takes it away.
This is an incredibly emotional read. We get a brief sense of
what is to come, particularly for Ania, through the early chapter sharing
Benjamin’s perspective in 1969, but the rest of the story takes the reader on
an emotional and at times tear-jerking journey. Carly Schabowski’s compelling
writing style had me hooked from cover to cover and I was completely captivated
by the story.
Our story is told through a dual-POV narrative which worked
really well and allowed us to see things from not only Ania’s perspective but
also Benjamin’s. His POV is structured around his much older self looking back
on his wartime experiences so we have occasional chapters set in 1969 as well
as the main 1939-1943 timeline and this was really powerful.
Ania was a brilliant and really complex protagonist. Very
early on in the book it became clear to me that Ania was autistic – albeit it
is not identified as such in the book and she is merely labelled as ‘different’.
The chapters focusing on Ania’s perspective were very cleverly crafted to feel
authentic to the typical autistic experience of the world, evidenced by how
quickly I – as an autistic woman myself – identified that Ania would today be
considered autistic and began to immediately resonate with her experiences. Ania
goes on a brilliant journey throughout the book, finding a real purpose in her
resistance work and seeking revenge against the Nazis for all they’ve done to
her and her family. Her emotional detachment to her experiences doesn’t always
make for an easy read but it is definitely an impactful one.
There’s a beautiful found family element to the story, with
this gang of people who were outcasted by society for different reasons finding
a home with each other. Similarly to Ania, all of these four characters were
complex, multi-dimensional and really well written. It was brilliant following
them trying to survive in war-torn Poland and gradually starting to complete
resistance activities against their Nazi occupiers. I loved the way that Wanda,
Gosia and Aleksi, and particularly Benjamin, treated Ania and didn’t see her as
less than because of her neurodivergence. This was a refreshing read
particularly after the way the earlier chapters focused on Ania being seen as
less-than and challenging by her family, who simply saw her differences as
something which needed to be fixed.
Overall, The Girl With The Red Ribbon is a beautifully
written and powerful piece of historical fiction which is a must-read for fans
of the genre, particularly those who are neurodivergent or ‘different’ in some
way themselves.
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