Tag: book reveiws

This was the Hudson Literary Guild book selection for November, and members enjoyed both the discussion and the movie, Ashes in the Snow, based on the book.

I noticed that the book is considered to be YA – young adult – designed for readers roughly 12 to 18 years of age. It’s historical fiction based in part on memories from the author’s family. Sepetys’ grandfather had been a Lithuanian military officer, but like Lina’s cousin Joanna in the story, his had family escaped to a refugee camp in Germany. However, like Lina, the narrator of the story, several members of his family were deported and imprisoned as the Soviets ravaged their country.

Stalin’s efforts to absorb the Baltic states into the Soviet Union are something about which I knew very little. As part of that effort, the Soviets began mass deportations of perceived “enemies of the people” from the region. As a university provost and having helped Joanna’s family escape to Germany, Lina’s father – and his family – would have definitely been targeted for removal.

The story was excellent and moved me to do a little Google research to learn a bit more about the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states. Its narrator is Lina, a 15-year-old girl. The story starts with the arrest of the family, including Lina, her brother Jonas and her mom Elena, and follows the family as they are taken by train to a work camp in Siberia. The family lives at that camp for nearly a year before being taken to an even more remote camp above the Arctic circle near the North Pole. 

The story discusses the brutality of camp life ranging from near starvation, disease, and nearly impossible living conditions. The story also explores a variety of human behaviors and the complexity of human emotion. Overall, I think this was an excellent book for young readers to begin to learn some history that may not be well known. But the story also enables a reader to understand how people can live with optimism even in the face of abject misery.

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club as Elizabeth has been mourning her beloved husband, Stephen. But now Joyce’s daughter Joanna is getting married! All the club members attend this joyous celebration, but at the reception, Nick, the best man seeks out Elizabeth to ask for her help. It seems that someone has placed a bomb under his car and he’d like her help trying to figure out who that could be.

And then he disappears.

Many years ago, Nick and his business partner, Holly, had accepted a Bitcoin payment for some services they’d provided. They had been holding onto the code until its market value made it worthwhile to cash in. Now that it’s worth over $350 million pounds, they have agreed to cash it in and have sought the advice of two other people with regard to the transaction.

The code was kept in a secure facility that they own. Multiple levels of security, including retinal scans are in place just to enter this highly secure “cold storage” facility. And then to obtain the code from their personal vault, both parts of an access code are required, with Nick and Holly each having only one of those parts. With Nick missing, Holly becomes a suspect in his disappearance, because why share even $350 million pounds if one doesn’t have to. But then she is killed!

The two from whom Nick and Holly had asked advice cashing in the Bitcoin, become suspects in Holly’s murder and Nick’s disappearance. And the race is on to try and figure out both Nick and Holly’s codes to access the vault. Meanwhile, Ron is dealing with a family issue, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to a notorious criminal.

This latest adventure of the Thursday Murder Club was enjoyable and engrossing. With Joyce’s daughter Joanna now married, there is hope for the relationship between mother and daughter to be better too. This was a fun story!