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The Sister Behind the Berlin Wall

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The Sister Behind the Berlin Wall

By: Cynthia Anderson
Narrated by: Daphne Kouma
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About this listen

France, 1942.

Orphaned sisters Léa and Rose live under the increasingly oppressive German occupation in Orléans. Times have been tough since their mother died - all they have left is each other - but practical Léa does her best to take care of Rose, the daydreamer.

Then Léa loses her job, just as Rose has a sudden and heart-stopping encounter with André, a handsome young French fugitive, that changes her life forever.

The women must flee the city, and everything they've ever known, finding safe lodgings with a kindly winemaker and his family on their Loire valley farm.

But they aren't safe for long. And, faced with the grim choice between imprisonment or travelling to Germany to work for the war effort, Léa reluctantly chooses the latter, thinking only of taking care of Rose.

In a remote town in eastern Germany, Léa and Rose are confronted with the horror of the Nazis' brutality and treatment of the women workers, and learn to survive by clinging to the love they've each found in a bleak existence, and by keeping their enemy even closer . . .

©2026 Cynthia Anderson (P)2026 Bonnier Books UK 20th Century Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Military Thriller & Suspense War & Military Heartfelt War
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Firstly, the title is completely misleading. The Berlin Wall features in an epilogue of 10 pages and, even then it's a brief hint at the Wall coming down, with no relevance to the rest of the book. No part of the actual plot is in any way linked to the Berlin Wall or it's story. The book is slow and plodding due to the immature, almost juvenile style of writing. Everything we learn from the book is told to us, word for word. More skilled authors write in a way that shows us the events rather than tell us. I found the main characters weak and shallow, with little or no development from the beginning of the book to the end. I found Rose a very immature and irritating character. Lea wasn't much better. The plot is simply not believable and gets worse as the book goes on. Unfortunately the narrator was as slow and plodding as the plot, so this book was really hard going. I was so disappointed as I had previously read the Pilot's Wife and really enjoyed it, so I thought I had found a new author to listen to. Instead I wasted a precious credit on this!

Disappointing

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