What Only We Know – Book Tour

A door slammed and the unmistakable sound of boots came crashing up the hall. Liese held her little daughter’s hand so tightly, the tiny fingers had turned purple. The SS officer’s hand was at Liese’s throat before she saw him move. ‘I can kill you easily, then I can kill your daughter.’ He relaxed his grip a little. ‘Or perhaps I could kill her first?’

England, forty years later. When Karen Cartwright is unexpectedly called home to nurse her ailing father, she goes with a heavy heart. The house she grew up in feels haunted by the memory of her father’s closely guarded secrets about her beautiful dressmaker mother Elizabeth’s tragic suicide years before.

As she packs up the house, Karen discovers an old photograph and a stranger’s tattered love letter to her mother postmarked from Germany after the war.

During her life, Karen struggled to understand her shy, fearful mother, but now she is realising there was so much more to Elizabeth than she knew. For one thing, her name wasn’t even Elizabeth, and her harrowing story begins long before Karen was born.

It’s 1941 in Berlin, and a young woman called Liese is being forced to wear a yellow star…

A beautiful and gripping wartime story about family secrets and impossible choices in the face of terrible hardship. Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, We Were the Lucky Ones and The Alice Network.

I have read a lot of historical fiction as it’s one of my favourites genres and What Only We Know definitely is up there! It is set across the 1970s and WW2. It follows the stories of 1970s Karen, a teen and adult across the book as she discovers more about her mother’s tragic death. After a school trip to Berlin, she is left with more questions than answers. Her strained relationship with her father pushes her into returning to Berlin during another historically significant time and this time, she isn’t leaving with answers.

I found Karen to be unlikeable and childish but I could understand her persistence to discover more about her mother’s early life.

Overall, a strong 4 stars!

Bex

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