A nice contrast between the life of one cousin caught in the horrors of WWII Europe and one cousin suffering the normal trials of life in America. There are several other stories threading through the novel, but all of them tie together well.
Nothing extraordinary about the plot line or the characters themselves, but nicely done and a quick, fun read. ( )

In the years after World War One, the older Kaninsky brothers leave their home in Riga, Latvia, and emigrate to New York. Charlie and Louie, now Kane, eventually go back and persuade their sisters, Rena and Jeannette, to join them in America. Their youngest brother, Mordecai, does not. Instead, he moves his small family, and their parents, to Vilna, Lithuania. It's a fateful decision.

When the Second World War starts, the choices made are irrevocable. We follow Mira Kane, Charlie's 18-year-old daughter, and Rosha, Mordecai's eight-year-old daughter. Mira is the daughter of prosperous businessman Charlie, owner of a knitwear business, safe, secure, and dreaming of a career as a fashion designer.

Rosha is the daughter of a Jewish family in German-occupied Lithuania.

The Kanes are devastated when they learn through Charlie's contacts that Mordecai's family has met the fate of so many Jews, rounded up, marched into the forest, and killed. What they don't know is that Rosha has survived. Mordecai thrust her into the arms of a friend, Polish candlemaker Marta Juraska. Rosha is hidden in the family's basement.

As Charlie struggles with survivor's guilt, Mira with the way her dreams are constricted and changed by the war, and Jeannette with depression and what we'd now call PTSD, the Juraska family and little Rosha navigate the dangerous waters of Nazi-controlled Vilna, hoping just to survive.

This is a beautifully rendered tale, with wonderful, gentle insight into the characters and their struggles. I just could not stop reading.

And there's a wonderful payoff at the end.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

I liked it, but I wouldn't say I loved it. I was intrigued by the parallel stories and waited for the time when they would join. When they finally did, it was anticlimactic. I never felt the connection between Mira nad Rosha. ( )

I liked seeing how two sides of one family were affect by WWII and the Holocaust, on both sides of the Atlantic. Rosha’s harrowing tale in hiding and Mira’s as she tries to build a life constricted by a family’s worry and guilt were both spellbinding. The author really pulls at the heart strings with both her girls as well as the family members surrounding them.

I liked the characters in this book, overall. Both Mira and Rosha were pretty developed, though Mira more so. I think probably because more time seemed to be spend with Mira and her family. I liked how Mira was aware of the tragedy surrounding what was happening in Europe, but she wasn’t kept bound by it like her parents and their generation. I liked how she was striving to build a life all her own. Yet, we as an audience got to also see a bit of her shallowness by how constrained she felt in her familial circumstances. She felt like a very three-dimensional character, and I liked that.

Secondary characters were vivid for the most part and an interesting segue to explore the Holocaust and its impact on different people. I found how Charlie, Jeanette, and Avram dealt with the harsh events in this time period fascinating and illuminating. They all touched my heart. There were at times, though, too many voices being explored. The story almost seemed to become muddled in all the perspectives and different events.

The story also seemed to drag on in the latter half. By about the last 30%, almost everything that needed to be said seemed to have been expressed. I kept going through chapter after chapter expecting to reach the ending, with no ending in sight. I frankly got bored this latter half and wished some editing could have been done for brevity’s sake.

Not a bad book overall. The characters were fantastic, and the story itself was gripping and heart-touching. Yet, there were times where it got lost in the multitude of voices used to explore it. Also, the ending dragged something awful. A nice addition to the body of Holocaust and WWII literature. ( )

1941 — Vilna, Poland: Eight year old Rosha Kaninsky’s life is about to change in ways she is ill-prepared to understand. She lives with her father and mother, Mordecai and Ester, and her grandmother whom she fondly calls Bubba. Things had been quite different for several days – she could no longer go to school; she was told to stay away from the windows. But, they were all still together. Then, one morning, Poppa and Mama were packing her things. They woke her very early. Bubbe only had a glass jar with ice and lemon. Upon Rosha’s curiosity, Bubbe says, “This is all I need … Something to remind me of sweetness.” Rosha reminds her grandmother that lemons are sour. Bubbe says, “… but only by tasting lemons are you sure to remember sweetness.” They were walking with many others — soldiers poking them. As soon as he was able, Poppa walked her to the side and handed her to Mrs. Juraska, the candle-maker, and left her.

1941 – New York: The Kaninsky’s had family in the US. The Kane’s had shortened there name upon arriving. They received terrible news that Mordecai, Ester, Bubbe, and Rosha had all been killed by Nazi soldiers. Eighteen year old Mira Kane grieved for the family she’d not seen for several years. She thought especially of little Rosha who she really only knew through photographs. Mira works in her father’s factory, a clothing manufacturer. She has natural talent in the way of fashion design. She wants to continue school for design; she wants to get married; she wants to have children. She wants the American dream.

A heart-breaking story of Jewish family lives being torn apart during WWII. The reader is taken back and forth between Rosha’s confusion and desperation in contrast with Mira’s more comfortable, almost superficial, life. The characters were fictional, but they were so well written, you’d swear they were actual people. You also wouldn’t know by reading this well-plotted story that this is Sande Boritz Berger’s debut novel. If you like historical fiction of WWII and the Holocaust, you won’t be disappointed with The Sweetness. Rating: 4 out of 5. ( )