Rose Under Fire

This book will bring tears to your eyes and an order of Elizabeth Wein's other book to your door! Set in 1944-46, Southampton, Wein brings a fiction character's story to life using true information of women's concentration camps in WW2.

When Rose Justice , an American ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary) Pilot, gets captured by Germans we follow her story into Ravensbrück, a women's concentration camp. During her imprisonment there, we learn about the true atrocities in the camps including the experiments they did on the unfortunate girl and the bonds she made during her time there.   This fictional diary has meaningful poems embedded in the text that Rose has written about the war. The poems deepen our understanding of her thoughts and help us picture perfectly the images Wein portrays.Wein has come up with a unique perspective of what time was like as a woman prisoner. 'Rose Under Fire' has an unpredictable plot that has you tense and blinking back the tears at times, but is utterly gripping.   This book is certainly not over estimated as Wein hooks you in so easily you don't realise you like the book so much until you can't put it down! She then continues to build up the tension and suspense until the daring, lucky escape from Ravenbrück. But it doesn't end there, Elizabeth Wein continues to write about Rose's and some others recovery and their afterward feelings.

  I feel that I enjoyed this book, and so with anyone who likes books set in WW2 and would like to see it from a woman's point of view. Overall it is a well written, interesting gripping book and I shall be looking out for her name when I next chose a book!