When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (1971) by Judith Kerr: An Audiobook

🐰 Anna was a Jewish 9 year-old girl lived in Berlin. The titular pink rabbit is her favorite stuffed toy. Did Hitler really steal it? Of course not! But he stole what the pink rabbit represents of Anna - her innocent happy childhood. Told from Anna's POV, this is a semi autobiographical story, derived from Kerr's own experience of fleeing from her home at the start of the Second World War.

🐰 Anna is the younger child of a prominent Jewish journalist who often wrote against the Nazis. Approaching the election, her father fled from Germany, as his name had been publicly targeted by Hitler once he's elected. Anna and her older brother didn't realize the upscale political tension in their country, they just saw Hitler's face glared out at them from street posters.

🐰 I love how Anna's parents hid the real dangerous situation from the children in order to avoid any distress and fear. When the mother took Anna and her brother by train to Switzerland, she made the journey just like a exciting, albeit secretly, one to meet their father. Though Anna witnessed how her mother had tightly clutched her bag during ticket inspection, but seemed more relaxed after passing the border, Anna didn't have any inkling how scared her mother had been, and what was the cause.

🐰 When Anna and her brother heard that Hitler has likely confiscated their house, they imagined how Hitler's playing with their board game and Anna's pink rabbit. They knew that Hitler was an evil guy, but never realized how evil he was.

🐰 After a brief stay in Switzerland, the family moved to France and started a new life in a Paris small apartment. They became poorer because Anna's father was struggling to get a decent writing job. Amidst the struggles in adapting to the new school and learning new language, not mentioning the money restraint, Anna felt happy enough because they live there together as family. It reminds me of my own feeling. My life was always wholesome because we lived it together as family, where there's always love and care. No matter what came our way, we could face it as we had each other.

🐰 This book isn't a childish reminiscent of one of the darkest times in our history; it is a story about resilience, about the power of love and family. It is also about hope and courage in navigating changes. It's a sweet and poignant testimony of humanity during dark moments. I am so grateful of having read this at this time of my life, for I wouldn't have appreciated as much had I read it as a child. I loved also the narrator of the audiobook I listened to; Tacy Kneale did a great job of bringing this classic into life!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#MustGetMonday: Vera Wong's Guide to Dating a Dead Man

I first saw this comparatively new meme from Davida @ The Chocolate Lady's Boom Review Blog. But the creator of Must Get Monday is Becca @ The Becca's Files.

The purpose of Must Get Monday is to spotlight some of those books you simply CAN’T WAIT to get your hands on… but might have to if you’re waiting for them to release.

The book I'm featuring today is the sequel of a cozy mystery I have read and loved last year: Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. I've been hoping for a sequel, and the other day I saw this exciting news from the author's IG while browsing my IG feed:

VERA WONG'S GUIDE TO DATING A DEAD MAN

Blurb:

Put the kettle on, there’s a mystery brewing…Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective?

Vera Wong, tea house owner and occasional sleuth should feel content. Her son Tilly has moved in with his girlfriend, and the shop has been inundated with customers.

But Vera can’t help feeling a little… bored. Sometimes, all an old lady wants is a murder to solve. Is that too much to ask for?

Then Vera comes across a distressed young woman called Millie, whose friend Xander has gone missing. Is this Vera's chance to get out her trusty notebook and solve another mystery?

Do you know that Warner Bros. TV has just acquired the 1st book rights, with Oprah Winfrey's and Mindy Kaling's production houses to produce a TV series? I wonder who would play Vera Wong! She's a Chinese elderly woman who lives in America, and the owner of a tea shop. A dead body was found one day inside her tea shop, and that's how she began her amateur sleuthing. Sutanto's depiction of Vera Wong's character felt genuine. It's no wonder, because later on I learned that Vera Wong was actually inspired by Sutanto's own mother - a Chindo (Chinese-Indonesian). And Vera Wong is really a typical warm and affectionate Asian mother that you'd miss a lot after several months.

This second book will be published in April, 2025, so now I just have to wait patiently... :)

Have you read the first book?
Do you have book(s) you just can't wait to get into?

Sparkling Cyanide (1945) by Agatha Christie: A Re-read

🍸 Rosemary Barton has been dead for a year now. Yet, the six people, who gathered around the table at Luxembourg Restaurant to celebrate her birthday when she suddenly collapsed and died, could not forget her still. The coroner's verdict was that she had put the cyanide into her glass by herself, a suicide due to post-flu depression.

🍸 But was it really suicide? Or was it murder, as was hinted in the anonymous letter received by Rosemary's husband George Barton? If so, who, among the six people, was the murderer? Was it the husband himself, out of his rage of Rosemary's love affair? Her little sister Iris, to gain a large inheritance? Or was it Rosemary's male friends, Anthony or Steven - which one was her lover? Maybe it's George's secretary, Ruth, who loved George? Or Sandra, Phillip's wife - did she know of her husband's infidelity? Whoever it was, all six had strong motive to murder Rosemary.

🍸 Agatha Christie had done it again! Sparkling Cyanide (first published in the US in 1945 as Remembered Death) is everything we love in Golden Age detective fiction, especially in Agatha Christie's. Rosemary's character is an important key on this murder case. She was a self-centered, shallow-minded woman who knows how to ensnare men into her net. She reminded me a little of Rebecca de Winter (in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca). Not the exact personalities, but her power over others that makes her loved and hated at the same time, and how her influence grips the others, that her name evokes some emotions in their selves, long after she died - it felt like she's always present, just like with Rebecca.

🍸 Colonel Race's involvement is pretty small here. He was invited to the second birthday party at Luxembourg - this time for Iris' birthday, but George Barton used it to decoy the murderer by a scenario which he refused to reveal to anyone, which of course would alarm the murderer. Would he succeeded? Or would he be the second murder victim? Quite a proper murder mystery, eh?

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Read for:

20 Books of Summer 2024

hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books

Mini Reviews for #AgathaChristieSS24: August

The Gate of Baghdad

Parker Pyne is on holiday in the Middle East. During a long motor trip journey from Damascus to Baghdad, just when everyone is sleeping of boredom, one of the passengers, a Captain Smethurst is found dead, stabbed at the back of his neck. This time Parker Pine must use his brain, not to solve a romantic or household affair, but a murder! Luckily he has a useful habit of listening to people's talk, that it helps him this time to point out the murderer. A simple, clever, and amusing mystery.

The Man Who Was No. 16

Tommy and Tuppence are helping Inspector Carter to catch the great Russian spy, the number 16. Tommy shines in this case, after borrowing Poirot's famous method of using his grey cells, to locate the villain and releases Tuppence. A good story involving disguises, some actions, red herring, and some clever and hilarious scenes. I loved the smart conversation between No. 16 and Tommy, using a lot of the number sixteen as the password. If you haven't realized yet, I also purposely posted this mini review on the 16th! I think this is going to be my favorite from Tommy & Tuppence stories - clever, witty, with perfect proportions of actions, mysteries, and humour. And it's nice too that once and a while Tommy shines over Tuppence - though in this case she was powerless to do anything, but still.... Finally, Tommy could be the Poirot of Tuppence's Hastings! :D

Summer Vibes Book Tag

I found this fun book tag somewhere (sorry, couldn't really remember which book blog), but it's originally created by Deanna @ The Comfy Reader.

The rules:

• Mention the creator and link back to the original post! (Deanna @ The Comfy Reader)
• Thank the blogger who tagged you (I tagged myself, LOL!)
• Answer all the prompts below however you see fit.
• Tag some friends!
• Feel free to use the graphics.

You can click the link on the titles to read my reviews. Now let's play!

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

The Stone of Chastity by Margery Sharp

James by Percival Everett

Dear Paris: The Paris Letters Collection by Janice MacLeod

Paris is always my guilty pleasure!

Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

A weird friendship of a horse, a dog, a raven, and a human child - but it's what a true friendship is supposed to be!

Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain

What an adventure it was to time-travel to the Paris of 1954!

Murder on the Menu by Alex Coombs 

The Fair Miss Fortune by D.E. Stevenson 

The Weather at Tregulla by Stella Gibbons

The most annoying character here is Terrence Willows, a selfish, moody painter lives in Bohemian lifestyle with his sister (very opposite him in personality).

Interested in doing the tag? Then consider yourself tagged! ;)

Blue Hawk (2024) by Chloe Turner

Thanks to Deixis Press and NetGalley for providing me review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

💙 Blue Hawk is Chloe Turner's debut novel - and such a brilliant debut! It's a historical fiction depicting the world of clothier in the 17th century. Our heroine is Joan, a weaver's daughter in Gloucestershire. Her father is a drunken dreamer, who ruined his dyeing business and almost brought his family to poverty, if Joan hadn't stepped up as its new captain.

💙 It sounds like many other businesses in modern time, but in 17th century, a tradeswoman, especially in clothier business, was almost unheard of. It's men's world, and with struggles had Joan gained respect from these men. She's fortunate to get acquainted to a widow, who's been assisting a dyer, and therefore understood enough of the art. From her, Joan learned the art of dyeing; the process of creating beautiful colors from plants and minerals, which she was fascinated with. Combining the two lines, weaving and dyeing, would create a new success in the business. Could Joan achieve her dream and thrive in the world hitherto was dominated by men?

💙 Joan's main obstruction actually came from inside the family. One is her beautiful but envious, shallow minded sister Alice; the other is, surprisingly-but maybe not, considering the era-her husband, the kind, loving proud young man who belittled Joan's opinion and talent. Between these two, they almost crushed Joan's spirit and made her just another stay-at-home mother and housewife, just like many women of her age.

💙 I was amazed at the fact that this is a debut novel. Turner's depiction of Gloucestershire seemed to transport me back to that era, and I felt like living amongst those people, watching with fascination how the colors of Joan's cloth turned like a magician's work. Feeling too every joy and sorrow, struggles and triumphs of her life. It is a wonderful journey of a woman's struggles in the men's world, it is also an insightful story of family, jealousy, pettiness, and friendship. All is beautifully written and thoroughly well researched.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2


**Blue Hawk was published in 17 July 2024**

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (1950) by Barbara Comyns

🥄 Barbara Comyns is an author I have first heard from #booktwitter. I've been meaning to try her book to see what the fuss really is about, when I spotted Our Spoons Came from Woolworths on the "Audiobooks Recommended for You" section on my Everand the other day. (I love you, algorithm!) And so, without further consideration, I listened to it. Now I can report back that #booktwitter had been right, Barbara Comyns is something of an author, and that I've found yet another author I'd love to read more of!

🥄 Our Spoons is a semi-autobiographical novel, based on Comyns' marriage to John Pemberton, which ended in 1935. Sophia Fairclough is the heroine, a twenty-one naïve young girl who lived in 1930s bohemian London. She's a painter, and having fond of a fellow painter called Charles, they were soon married. Young (Sophia is just about nineteen), poor - very poor, and naïve, it's pretty hilarious to follow their ignorance and blunders throughout their household lives. Sophia's cooking tasted like soap at first, and she thought that strongly wishing not to get pregnant is an effective birth control.

🥄 To support the household costs, Sophia had a job as model for painters. Whereas Charles, he's as selfish as most painter characters I've read in novels - they only think about their paintings, and what they need to create the art. If people don't buy it? Well, let them keep painting. Sophia seems to be ignorant of many things, but she correctly called Charles' behavior as Peter Pan's.

🥄 Of course, when they were poorest, Sophia got pregnant. Her labouring process provided many scenes which would have been painful to read, if Comyns didn't polish them with wit and humour, which resulted into a quite entertaining piece. It was one of several parts from the book that derived from Comyns' real experience. The hospital is terrible to poor people, and Charles' rich relatives weren't helpful either. They all blamed Sophia for being pregnant and thus hindered Charles to be creative - as if being pregnant isn't a work of two! This phase - pregnancy to the birth of their healthy boy - must have been horrifying for Comyns; though she had written about it with such humour and wit that made it ironically funny.

🥄 Then entered another artist called Peregrine, with whom Sophia had had an affair. When I thought he was a better man for her, another crisis came that thwarted my hope. But in the end, those struggles shaped Sophia to be a better person. Her cooking was much improved that she even worked as a cook. I'm happy for her in the end, she deserves a happy ending!

🥄 Needless to say, I loved this book. Comyns wrote it brilliantly, she successfully presented a satire of the hypocrite British society in that era in a funny piece of fiction. The narrator of the audiobook I listened to (Madeleine Leslay) also did a good job in performing it. She voiced Sophia perfectly.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Read this for:

20 Books of Summer

hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books