The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @harperperennial for the review copy of The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr.  This book was just published this week on May 28^th.

What is the last book that you read that you couldn’t put down?  The Goddess of Warsaw had a riveting plot line and I kept finding myself reading this whenever I had a moment.

Lena Browning is a legendary actress that is mostly retired in 2005.  When a new and upcoming actress, Sienna, asks to play Lena in a biopic of her life.  Sienna gets more than she bargained for as Lena launches into her true-life story.  Lena was born Bina Blonski in Warsaw and was a wealthy Polish Jew when WWII started and destroyed her life.  Bina becomes a spy, an assassin, a whore; whatever it takes to protect her family and fellow Jews while also exacting revenge on the Nazis.  She rises to stardom in the 1950s and continues as a femme fatale in real life tracking down and executing Nazis living under cover in the United States.  Will Lena ever be able to put the past behind her?

My thoughts on this novel:

·       This was a very engaging novel – a real page turner.  I would class this as an action-adventure historical fiction novel.

·       Bina is blonde and able to pass as an Aryan woman.  She uses this and her acting skills to help smuggle weapons and food into the ghetto during WWII.

·       I didn’t feel the love triangle between Bina, her husband Jakub, and Jakub’s brother Aleks.  I didn’t understand her undying love for Aleks.  She first saw him as a teenager across the room and played hard to get.  He instead dated and married her best friend, and she married his brother Jakub.  I did feel like the end of the novel really pulled this part of the story line together.

·       Luckily, the plot moved on from the love story and focused more on Bina as a femme fatale which I really enjoyed.

·       This was a novel of revenge and vengeance through time.  The timelines were WWII, 1950s, and 2005.  I got a The Count of Monte Cristo vibe from this novel with Bina as Edmond Dantes.

·       As a WWII novel mostly set in the Ghetto in Warsaw, there is a lot of tragedy, loss, and sadness in this novel.  It did make me tear up at times, but the story kept moving and didn’t let me wallow in the tragedy.

·       I thought the ending of this novel was perfect and really tied together the complete story and all the timelines.

·       I enjoyed the author’s note at the end that explained the inspirations and real history of this novel.  I had never heard of the Warsaw Uprising and it is an important part of history.  This novel was a unique story different than other WWII fiction I have read.

·       I also thought it was touching that author Lisa Barr’s own grandmother was a holocaust survivor.  This was my first Lisa Barr novel, but I will be reading more of her work.

Favorite Quote: “What you don’t know, what Nazis can’t sniff out or tell by a tic or nervous gesture, is that I am nearly twenty-four years old, and I have portrayed practically every part imaginable:  heroine, wife, lover, mistress, daughter, almost-mother, villain, maid, whore, seductress, smuggler, assassin.  I am a woman born to become anyone other than who she really is.”

 Overall, The Goddess of Warsaw is a riveting historical fiction adventure and a great tale of revenge.