The Soldier’s Letter’s (Last Words Book 3) – ARC Book Review

“Survive for as long as you can, fight until you can’t fight any longer, and if this war ever ends, I want you to run as far from here as you can and never look back…”

Nazi-occupied Prague, 1941: On a foggy winter’s day, a solider called Charlie is ordered to murder an elderly Jewish woman. He refuses, but that doesn’t stop another Nazi shooting her. As the woman’s daughter cries out, “Mama, no, please don’t leave me!” Charlie knows that he is not a killer. He vows to save as many lives as he can.

In Theresienstadt concentration camp, he sees the same sapphire-eyed girl with beautiful auburn hair. Her name is Amelia. He escorts her to Block B and memorizes her prison number. They are meant to be enemies yet, in that instant, he falls in love.

Yet in such hell, love isn’t meant to exist and they are destined to be torn apart. Despite this, Charlie never stops looking for Amelia, writing letters to her and keeping them safe. But what are the chances of her surviving the war? Will the soldier’s letters remain unread forever?

This is the final book of Last Words series. This time the story is written in the perspective of Charlie Crane, who was a former Nazi who fell in love with Amelia a beautiful Jew.

Very rare I read a book in a Holocaust fiction with the Nazi’s perspective, the first book, The Storyteller by Jodi Piccoult, where there’s a part of a former Nazi who recounts his story. Here, the entire book is told from Charlie’s perspective–starting with the time when he was around twelve years when Hitler came to power in 1933 to the time when he joined Hitler Youth Movement and ended up becoming a Nazi. Despite being a Nazi, he did not share the ideologies and secretly did not support Hitler’s political agenda. As a result, when he meets Amelia, a Czech Jew, he was determined to save her life, at whatever cost. The story goes on to tell his love story with Amelia, shifting back and forth from past to the present day when Charlie was reunited with Amelia after being separated for over seventy years.

I need to make a small comment about the part. I know the author, being Jewish and coming from a family of Holocaust survivors would have done research and tremendous research and making the story emotional and heartbreaking and enjoyable to the readers, but in Chapter 25, there was a small error. I am not sure if it was me or maybe a typing error, the year was written as 1944 when apparently the war ended and Hitlier died. Having done history, the year was wrong. The war was still going on in 1944–it was May 1945 when the war finally ended and Hitler died thus ending the war in Europe. But other than that small minute error, this is an emotional and heartbreaking journey of two lovers that will bring tears to the reader.

Shari Ryan has become one of my favorite authors and I am looking forward to read more of her books! Worth five stars!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.