Bookworm: Sarah's Key

 If you were to come to my house and look at my book shelves you would see that I don't tend to read books that are about serious topics, like WWII. On my own, I would have never read Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay but a good friend of mine recommended it to me. And boy am I glad she did.

Sarah's Key is a novel with two main characters, Sarah and Julia. Sarah is a 10 year old girl in 1942 living in Paris who is arrested with her family in the Vel d'Hiv roundup in Paris. Thinking that she would be home the next day from the arrest, Sarah locks her little brother in a hidden cupboard in her home telling him they will be back to free him soon. We then follow Sarah through the heartbreaking experiences of Vel d'Hiv, being separaed from her parents and then sent to concentration camps.

Julia on the other hand, is a woman living in Paris in 2002 who is told by her editor to write about the Vel d'Hiv round up as it is the 60th anniversary of the horrifying event. Taking the story with the seriousness and respect that it deserves, she investigates what actually happened and eventually learns of Sarah. She becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Sarah and ends up finding out that Sarah's story links up to hers.

As you can tell, this is a pretty heavy book. It took me the entire summer to read this book because I could only handle it in small doses. I found it subject matter so depressing and heart wrenching at times that I had to take breaks from it. That being said, the closer I got to the end of the book the more the story hooked me and I could read more of it in one sitting. You really start to feel the pain that both Sarah and Julia experience throughout the story because of Tatiana's impeccable writing. Whenever I was done reading the book for the day I would just go and hug Matt for as long as he would let me.

Would I recommend it to you? Yes, yes and yes. I had never heard of the Vel d'Hiv round ups and what happened to the Jewish children during WWII and although it is heart breaking, I feel that their story deserves to be heard. I feel like the best way to show respect to those men, women, boys and girls is to never forget what happened to them.

I always find books about our history fascinating. Have you read any similar to this? Would you recommend them? If so, leave a comment below, I'd love to read them.

Bookworm: Orange Is The New Black

My all time fav place to curl up and read!! 

Like a lot of other books lately, Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman was turned into a TV show. This is how I was first introduced to the world of female prisons. After watching season one of the show (available on Netflix) I immediately went out to buy the book. Most readers say they hate it when a book is turned into a movie or a tv series. Me on the other hand? I love it (most of the time). It gives me another way of enjoying a story I like.

Orange Is The New Black is a memoir about a woman who lived a scandalous life in her early 20s and paid for it in her 30s. Piper was with a woman in her early 20s who happened to be a drug dealer. She didn't get too far into the world of drugs and money smuggling but she did smuggle money cross border one time. It was this incident that put her in jail years later. This book focuses on the events that lead her to her stint in prison and what she actually experienced in prison. Although I imagine the prison system is different in Canada, there are probably some close similarities. It's because of that, I found her prison life to be so interesting. Most of the media that has focused on people in prison has been about the experience that men go through, not women.

If I could go back in time I think I would have read the book before watching the TV show. Although the book was good, the TV show outshines it due to the changes they made from the original story.

I have heard that the second season will be coming out this year and I do plan on watching it, even though I'm sure at this point it will be nothing like the book. If you haven't seen the TV show, GO READ THE BOOK FIRST!! And then come back here and let me know what you thought :)