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A review by heidirgorecki
The Librarian of Saint-Malo by Mario Escobar
4.0
While the story was little bit stiff, this was a great read on the City of Saint-Malo in France during WW2 thru the eyes of the city librarian. Anyone who loves books as so many of us do, as well as history itself, understand Jocelyn’s loyalty and love to preserve the books and their history at a great cost. It is truly sad that the city lasted so long during the occupation to only be decimated in the weeks following D-Day, right at the tail end of the war.
I struggled a little with the romance Jocelyn had with Hermann, the Nazi soldier. While there certainly were Nazi’s who fought because they had to, or even as spies, and life is certainly not as black and white as we would like it to be - it’s easy to group a whole people as “evil” when the lines can blur individually - he still believed in his cause and the evil philosophy of Naziism as a whole and participated willingly in it. He didn’t agree with many of the methods but the book doesn’t allude to him trying to dismantle any of it with the position he was given aside from protecting some of Jocelyn’s books and a handful of forged Jewish papers. So for Jocelyn to be part of the resistance especially, but so against the Nazi’s and still allow herself to seek him out - be infatuated or even in love, fine, but not to intentionally pursue it - seems a little off kilter for me and unrealistic. But that’s just my opinion as a reader of a lot of WW2 stories.
Thank you to Netgalley and Thomas Nelson for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
I struggled a little with the romance Jocelyn had with Hermann, the Nazi soldier. While there certainly were Nazi’s who fought because they had to, or even as spies, and life is certainly not as black and white as we would like it to be - it’s easy to group a whole people as “evil” when the lines can blur individually - he still believed in his cause and the evil philosophy of Naziism as a whole and participated willingly in it. He didn’t agree with many of the methods but the book doesn’t allude to him trying to dismantle any of it with the position he was given aside from protecting some of Jocelyn’s books and a handful of forged Jewish papers. So for Jocelyn to be part of the resistance especially, but so against the Nazi’s and still allow herself to seek him out - be infatuated or even in love, fine, but not to intentionally pursue it - seems a little off kilter for me and unrealistic. But that’s just my opinion as a reader of a lot of WW2 stories.
Thank you to Netgalley and Thomas Nelson for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.