So this wasn't totally what I was expecting but I honestly had NO idea about the role of the Ritz during the Nazi occupation of Paris! I love it when authors go find overlooked and almost forgotten members of history and just mess with them when we have holes in our knowledge of who they were/what they did/what happened to them.

I honestly almost walked away from the book a bit before the midway mark. I know it's set in a different time and place but the institution of marriage and how women were expected to act once married...just sent me on an angry feminist millennial rage. BUT...Melanie Benjamin won me over by the end. I don't know how or when exactly but I was so glad that Blanche and Claude finally got to have a marriage

The ending is what really sucked and by sucked! I! DO! NOT! MEAN! IT! WAS! BADLY! WRITTEN! The ending was real. It's from records and the idea that Blanche went through ALL of that in the war and with Claude, only for her to come to that end was honestly heartbreaking. It infuriates me more now that we just don't know the details of that situation because my brain is trying to romanticize Claude and Blanche together.

Rep:

one of the main characters is Jewish