Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay~~Review

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay Description from goodreads:
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door-to-door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard—their secret hiding place—and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released.

Sixty Years Later: Sarah's story intertwines with that of Julia Jarmond, an American journalist investigating the roundup. In her research, Julia stumbles onto a trail of secrets that link her to Sarah, and to questions about her own romantic future.

In Sarah's Key, Tatiana de Rosnay offers up a mesmerizing story in which a tragic past unfold, the present is torn apart, and the future is irrevocably altered.

My Review

What a great book I had heard good things about it and can’t keep it on the shelf at the library but I didn’t realize just how good of a story this was.

The two stories merge together so flawlessly and you come to care so much for both Sarah and Julia. Sarah’s story is set during the holocaust in Paris during the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup where the French police rounded up all the Jews including thousands of children and sent them off to their deaths, but Sarah’s story goes so far beyond just the holocaust it is so heartbreaking. Julia is in modern-day Paris and a journalist hired to do a story about the roundup but what she finds hits so much closer to home than she ever imagined.

I loved this book it was so hard to put it down because I just had to know what had happened to Sarah. It also, like all good historical fiction should do, made me research the facts of this horrible day in France’s history because I like Julia had never heard of it and to me that is what this book is about as she says To Never Forget. This glimpse into history is a fictionalized account of the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup but it made me aware of it and the lives lost in a section of the Holocaust I knew nothing about. Also that these atrocities were carried out by the French Police on the orders of the Nazi’s not the Nazi’s themselves just seems to make it all the more heartbreaking.

If you follow my reviews you will know I love books that have a modern and a historical story and this one was no exception Tatiana de Rosnay beautifully blended these stories together. Ok I will stop gushing now.

I highly recommend this book, I listened to it on audio and narrator Polly Stone does a great job at bringing these characters to life.

5 stars