Counting Lost Stars by Kim Van Alkemade (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @williammorrowbooks for the review copy of Counting Lost Stars by Kim Van Alkemade.

What job in the past would you like to learn more about?  I enjoyed learning about punch card operators in Counting Lost Stars.  I didn’t realize that punch cards were used in WWII to categorize people.  It was an unfortunate use of a new technology. 

Rita Klein is a college student going into her senior year at Barnard in 1960.  She has just taken a summer class on computer programming that has gotten her excited about her future.  After she becomes pregnant, her parents send her to a Home for Unwed Mothers where she is forced to give away her baby.  Afterwards, she is unable to return to Barnard and takes a job with her programming skills at a firm located in the Empire State Building.  There she meets a tour guide named Jacob.  They grow close, but both of them harbor dark secrets.  Jacob is a Dutch Jew who survived the holocaust and is tormented by the fact that he could never find his family.  Will Rita be able to resolve her own troubles and to help Jacob?

Cornelia Vogel works as a punch card operator with her father at the Ministry of Information in 1941 in the Netherlands.  She slowly realizes that the census that they are working on is being used to find and categorize the Jewish citizens.  She gets to know her neighbor, Leah Blom, who teaches her English.  As she grows closer to Leah, she realizes that she loves her.  She also realizes she has to help her escape.  Will she be able to help Leah?

I really enjoyed this novel and couldn’t put it down at my kids’ soccer tournament this past weekend (don’t worry, I only read it between the games).  I liked both stories, but I kept wondering how they were related.  I liked how both stories came together perfectly at the end.  I like how the story showed that you could make choices that would make a difference to other people and your own lives.

I always love stories with a technical angle, and I loved learning about punch card operators and basic coding in the 1940’s and 1960’s.  It was considered a female job in those days.

I felt very bad for Rita.  It seems terrible to me that you were pressured into giving up your baby when you were an unwed mother.   I’m glad that has changed in the present day.

Cornelia and Leah are unconventional women who have a same-sex relationship in the 1940’s.  It would have not only been scandalous at the time, but also could have been deadly as homosexuals were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in the Nazi regime.  Alkemade does an excellent job of bringing the characters to life and making me care about them.  She also does an excellent job of making me care both about Rita and Jacob’s budding romance as well as Cornelia and Leah’s relationship.  I was vested in both of their stories.

The concentration camps and WWII experiences were harrowing and sad to read. Author Kim Van Alkemade does an excellent job of bringing the WWII experience to life and also creating great settings for both the 1940’s and 1960’s eras.  They were two distinct and different time periods.

Favorite Quote:  “Our secrets do us no good if we end up buried beneath the weight of them.”

I highly recommend this book to all historical fiction lovers.