Book Review: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel opens in the present day in Florida with Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian, falling on a photograph of a book in a magazine. The accompanying article describes the looting of libraries during World War II by the Nazis. Recognizing the book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years, Eva makes plans to fly to Berlin to retrieve it, and ends up reminiscing of her life in Nazi occupied France as a Jewish woman.

I recently joined a new book club, and The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel was the selection for March 2025. I literally only had 2-3 days to read the book before the meeting. Needless to say, I wasn't able to get the entire book read before the meeting, but I did end up finishing the story the day after my book club met. 

Let me begin by saying that Kristin Harmel is a talented storyteller and author. I found myself immediately drawn into the story of Eva Traube Abrams. I felt all the feelings throughout. I was anxious, scared, happy, sad, and angry to name just a few of the emotions I experienced. And, yes, there were several times I found myself literally bawling at different points of the novel . . . some were happy tears and others were not.

I did end up learning a lot about the underground resistance in France. I had no idea the extent of people helping hide Jewish children and adults, especially in France. We all know about Anne Frank and how people helped hide her and her family, but I guess I thought it was a rare occurrence. I also didn't realize that people were forging documents for Jewish people to be able to escape France into the neutral Switzerland. These are things that I wish my history classes had gone into more detail about when I was school. It's great to learn about the leaders, concentration camps, and war itself, but I remember being flabbergasted that people were just idly standing by letting this happen when people really weren't being idyll. 

This historical fiction novel does include a romance element to it, which didn't detract from the seriousness of the topic in my opinion. There were definitely a lot of likable characters, including a Nazi who was actually feeding intel to the resistance so that Jewish people could escape. I really hope that there were some that were helping instead of following Adolf Hitler blindly. And, of course, there were unlikable characters as well, including the neighbors of Eva, and I even found her mother to be quite annoying. However, I think Eva's mom just was having trouble coming to terms with what was happening and wanted to stick her head in the sand. By the end of the book, I ended up liking the mom a lot better.

During the book club discussion of The Book of Lost Names at my book club, there were a few people that just absolutely tore it to shreds . . . one being a woman who had her masters in history. They felt like the author did a disservice to the history of World War II and didn't feel like the main character had enough fear or urgency and was too wishy washy. I disagree with them and felt like Eva did have plenty of fear and urgency . . . it was more of an understated fear and urgency. So many historical fiction books read like a textbook that my eyes start to glaze over but that wasn't the case here. I felt like I learned a lot about World War II without it being too depressing or boring.

All in all, I absolutely fell in love with The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel, and I look forward to reading other works by the author. Five out of five stars.