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A review by meganac
The War Outside by Monica Hesse
3.0
I liked it but didn't love it - it isn't the kind of book that sticks with me, and maybe that's just a book/person mismatch.
It's set in a Japanese/German internment camp and flips back and forth between a German girl and a Japanese girl and how they interact with each other, and I'm all for little-covered periods of history. We don't think about how cruel the suspicion and hatred we directed towards our German/Japanese citizens was, and how close we may be to falling into the same thing today. The book gives a fantastic look into the tension of the time, the struggles of individuals to follow the law and reconcile it with their personal beliefs, and little nuances of camp life that you don't get from the history books.
The story flips back and forth between the two girls' points of view, which made it a little tricky to follow at times although the audiobook is nicely done. Not sure I'd recommend it just because I wasn't sucked in the way I like to be, but it wasn't bad.
It's set in a Japanese/German internment camp and flips back and forth between a German girl and a Japanese girl and how they interact with each other, and I'm all for little-covered periods of history. We don't think about how cruel the suspicion and hatred we directed towards our German/Japanese citizens was, and how close we may be to falling into the same thing today. The book gives a fantastic look into the tension of the time, the struggles of individuals to follow the law and reconcile it with their personal beliefs, and little nuances of camp life that you don't get from the history books.
The story flips back and forth between the two girls' points of view, which made it a little tricky to follow at times although the audiobook is nicely done. Not sure I'd recommend it just because I wasn't sucked in the way I like to be, but it wasn't bad.