Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I was really looking forward to reading this. A love story set in postwar WWII Germany between an American soldier and a German girl. What could be a meatier topic? Postwar occupied Germany, what a setting for a really superb story of love that overcomes all obstacles?
Not this book. This book is SUPPOSEDLY set in postwar Germany, but it's more like Fairyland. Every character here is a stereotype. They have no life; they just lay there on the page, mouthing the author's apologias. Lisa's parents don't try to stop her from forming a connection with the American soldier, they welcome it, after very few hesitations. No one in charge of the American army of occupation reproaches Andy for his immediate and obvious affair with this young German girl.
Frankly, this book is really insulting to anyone who actually went through the experience of loving a person from the "enemy camp", and is mostly an insult to those American soldiers who occupied Germany after WWII. It's so unrealistic! Lisa is able to follow Andy from posting to posting, getting jobs whenever she wants, with absolutely no problem, no red tape! And when (SPOILER) Andy is killed there's already someone waiting in the wings, all ready to step into his shoes in the character of Red, the best friend of Andy who oh-so-coincidentally loves Lisa too.
(END OF SPOILER)
The author's POV about the American occupation of Germany and the German reaction to it, and about what Germans really thought about Hitler, is obviously re-filtered through the blame-it-on-anyone-else-1990's. Per the heroine's, Lisa's, statement, only 1 million Germans were registered Nazis out of 70 million Germans, but the rest of them were all good, pure, downtrodden people who wanted peace as much as everyone else... This is ridiculous. If you use this fictional 17-year-old's reasoning, then how the heck did Hitler stay in power? Answer: most of the German people (not just 1 million registered Nazis) WANTED him in power. Otherwise there would have been more plots to remove him.
As for the author's writing ability - it's florid; adolescent, and the romance quotent (along with the realism quotent) is silly and unreal.
Ugh. I really disliked this book and do not recommend it.
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