Book Review: Things We Didn’t Say

 

Things We Didn't Say

by Amy Lynn Green

Bethany House 

Bethany House Publishers

 Christian  |  Women's Fiction 

Pub Date 03 Nov 2020 

I am reviewing a copy of Things We Didn’t Say through Bethany House Publishers and Netgalley:

Johanna Berglund,  is a headstrong linguistics student at at the University of Minnesota and she has very definite plans for the future, plans that do not include going back to the hometown she left behind, along with the secrets and heartbreaks that happened there.  But the Army has asked her to work as a translator at a nearby camp for German POWs.

When Johanna arrives she finds her once sleepy hometown is exploding with hostility.  Most of the Patriotic citizens do not want to have anything to do with German soldiers laboring in their fields, and they're not afraid to criticize those who work at the camp as well.  When Johanna describes the trouble to her friend Peter Ito, a language instructor at a school for military intelligence officers, he encourages her to give the town that rejected her a second chance.

As Johanna interacts with the men of the camp and censors their letters home, she begins to see the prisoners in a better light.  Advocating for better treatment for the prisoners makes her enemies in the community, especially when charismatic German spokesman Stefan Werner begins to show interest in Johanna and her work.  The longer Johanna wages her bottle on the home front, the more the lines between compassion and treason get blurred, and it becomes no longer clear who it is she can trust.

I give Things We Didn’t Say five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!