Karolina's Twins

Karolina's Twins by Ronald H. Balson
On Sale September 6, 2016
Published by St. Martin's Press
Rating: ★★★

In 1943 in the Chrzanow, Poland ghetto, Karolina, a young Jewish woman, gives birth to twins with help of her best friend, Lena. Before being transferred to a slave labor camp, Karolina makes one, desperate last ditch attempt to save her babies. Seventy years later, Lena is a Holocaust survivor and living in Chicago. She decides it's time to keep her promise to Karolina to find the twins and enlists a lawyer/PI team to help her.

The structure of this book was maddening. It can best be summed up as: "hey, did I ever tell you my life's story?" As such, the book is almost entirely in dialogue. But the dialogue isn't very good. At times, it feels more like characters reciting pages out of a history textbook than genuine conversation. The writing in this book is flat, uninspiring, and at times reminded me of a cable tv cop show.

"Well, Arthur, I don't know too much about head-spinning, but I think you're going to find out that Ms. Lockhart's really good at ass-kickin'." 

I do think there has to be a certain amount of leeway given to historical fiction in terms of accuracy and I get the sense that this author did his research. But some parts of this book are so preposterous. The story of what happens to the twins? No, nope, sorry, no way. A judge throwing a pregnant woman into jail for refusing to break privilege? Please. The parts of the story that resonated with me did so because of the history. By contrast, the parts that were the author's creation left me cold. Basically, I find WW2 interesting enough to give this book 3-stars.