By Libba Bray
Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan, 2025
480 pages
978-0-374-38894-2
Age 13 and older
Three interconnected stories follow teenagers navigating the ordinary and the extraordinary as their lives are impacted by political and global events. In Kleinwald, Germany, in 1939, Hanna and Sophie (both white) find their friendship flailing as War II progresses, but it’s re-energized when they both join the resistance. In 1980, Jenny moves with her image-conscious, upper-middle-class family to Berlin. Jenny (white), an amateur photographer, falls for punk rocker Lena, an East German escapee desperate to get her brother out. Jenny also befriends elderly neighbor Frau Hermann, who tells stories about Sophie and Hanna, two girls from her home village who went missing years before. In March 1980, in New York City, Miles (Filipino/white) is navigating the early days of the pandemic largely on his own. One of his moms, a nurse, is staying with a friend; the other, a photographer, is stuck in Amsterdam. Even as he navigates the unsettling present, including rising tensions around race and racism, he’s also delving into the past: His friend Chloe wants help researching information her grandmother sent about two girls, Sophie and Hanna, who disappeared in Germany in 1941. The three alternating narratives have finely developed characters and plot arcs, while themes of oppression on a global scale and guilt and forgiveness on a personal one resonate across them as a historical mystery unfolds, and the teens at the heart of each story make decisions about standing up and speaking out on behalf of others and themselves. ©2025 Cooperative Children’s Book Center