Day: July 24, 2019

White Rose by Kip Wilson

Author: Kip WIlson
Published: April 2, 2019
368 Pages

Reviewed By: Kim
Kim’s Rating: 4 stars

Book Description:

A gorgeous and timely novel based on the incredible story of Sophie Scholl, a young German college student who challenged the Nazi regime during World War II as part of The White Rose, a non-violent resistance group.

Disillusioned by the propaganda of Nazi Germany, Sophie Scholl, her brother, and his fellow soldiers formed the White Rose, a group that wrote and distributed anonymous letters criticizing the Nazi regime and calling for action from their fellow German citizens. The following year, Sophie and her brother were arrested for treason and interrogated for information about their collaborators.

Kim’s Review:

We are on a roll with all these covers in 2019! The Most Gorgeous Cover Tournament is going to be impossible this year!

I enjoyed this book very much. I’m a bit conflicted about my rating, simply because I like how the verse formatting allowed me to get through it quickly, hence I felt super accomplished, but I also am not a huge fan of verse formatting in general and I think it took something away from the story. It felt so impersonal. And the story was emotional and passionate, so it’s sad that I didn’t get all the feels like I should have.

This story also made me aware of something that has always been right under the surface, but keeps popping up and ruining wonderful things. Politics. Y’all know I hate politics in fiction. Fiction should be an escape from real life and usually you’re either on one side or the other and therefore, politics is a no win situation for half the population. Just keep it all out so everyone can enjoy stuff! The sad thing is that everything has become so saturated with politics and which side you’re on and who you voted for is your identity, that it seems to affect everything, even things that shouldn’t be politics related. I find myself comparing everything to our current political climate and in my mind, create problems that aren’t actually there. I’ve even starting looking for political jabs in books about WW2 and Nazi Germany that shouldn’t be there and aren’t there. I hate it. I don’t want to think this way. And what was nice about White Rose is that Wilson kept current politics completely out of it. Any comparisons made were completely out of my own mind. She didn’t even add any little lectures in her acknowledgment section. I really liked that. I felt rebuked by my own imagination and for doing things that I criticize others for.

So even though I doubt the author intended it, I learned more about myself and my perceptions and hopefully become more mature in my reading. So I did enjoy this book, I learned a lot, and I absolutely recommend it. I would also say this is one of the fiction books that belong on high school history teachers shelves! Very good book!

Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK