Bluebird by Sharon Cameron

Bluebird is a historical fiction novel based on a secret program code named Project Bluebird. The author has imagined a story that might have happened at the end of World War II as the Soviets and Americans raced to obtain secrets from the collapsed Nazi regime in Germany. In the novel there are two alternating narratives, that of Inge von Emmerich which begins in February, 1945 and of Eva Gerst which begins in August 1946. 

It is February, 1945. After taking her father's car for a joyride with her friend Annemarie Toberentz, sixteen-year-old Inge von Emmerich sneaks the car back home. Kurt, her family's chauffeur offers to clean the mud off it in exchange for two honey cakes. While Herr Gundersen gives seven-year-old Adolf and ten-year-old Erich their violin lessons, Inge enters her father's study. On his desk she sees a file with her name on it, something that puzzles her. When Mama finds her in the study listening to Papa's radio, she slaps her and sends her to her room.

Inge's papa works in a camp "rehabilitating the enemies of Germany. Teaching them to obey. To be better. To be useful and productive." The next day, Inge's mama pulls her from her League of German Girls meeting, and they drive quickly home. At home, her mama tells Inge, Erich and Adolf to each pack a bag with three changes of clothes and a coat. Inge's mother tells them nothing about what is happening or where they are going. Kurt drives them and Helga is also brought along. They don't go to Berlin  near papa's camp, as Inge expected, but instead drive to their summer lodge. And when they arrive, the car is unloaded of boxes and baskets of food, much more than three days worth.

At the summer house everyone is sent to their rooms. In her Mama's room next door, Inge hears the radio but cannot make out what is being broadcast. Kurt leaves during the night but leaves a car key and money for Inge under the door. After a week at the lodge, Inge questions her mama as to whether papa is coming. Her mama tells her that he is busy winning the war, creating a new world for them. Her abusive manner towards Inge leads her to leave the lodge and run to the Kleimann's house next door. Inge rips off some of the boards and spends time playing the piano until the house is hit by a bomb. Terrified she races home to find her mother has murdered Helga, Erich and Adolf and shot herself in the head. On the radio, Inge hears that Hitler is dead and the enemy is in Berlin.

Inge manages to start the car and drives to their home in Berlin, hoping to find her papa. As she enters the road near the house, she passes a truck of Soviet soldiers and doesn't stop for her friend, Annemarie who is in the field running towards her. Their home is in ruins and her papa is not there. While Inge searches for the file with her name in her papa's study, she hears soldiers voices downstairs. She hears Annemarie's voice and when she begins screaming, a terrified Inge hides underneath the large desk in the study. After the soldiers leave, Inge rescues the unconscious Annemarie and drives to her papa's camp. The car breaks down just a kilometer away, so leaves Annemarie in the car unconscious and walks to the camp. There Inge sees the most horrific sight imaginable: piles of human bodies.

At first Inge believes this is the work of the Soviet Communists. She meets a man in faded striped clothing from the camp, whom she believes is a prisoner of the Communists. She asks him about her father but he thinks her father is one of the prisoners. As the former prisoner starts to take Inge to the man in charge, she notices that the soldiers are Russian. She begins to realize that the people in the camp were prisoners of the Nazis. When she asks about a man named von Emmerich, the former prisoner tells her about the doctor and how "He wanted to know what he could make you say make you do. How much you could endure. He made sure you were crazy, before you died." He tells her the prisoners were "lab rats", "unworthy of life" and that everyone running the camp has been arrested....except the doctor. Inge flees the camp, realizing that everything she's been told is a lie.

August, 1946, sees Eva Gerst and her companion, Brigit Heidelmann watching as their ship pulls into New York harbour. Brigit doesn't speak and is easily upset so Eva leads her back to their cabin to get their suitcases. Both girls have papers sewn into the lining of their skirts. Miss Schaffer, in charge of their group leads the thirty-eight refugees off the ship and into customs. 

Eventually Eva and Brigit are met by Elizabeth Whittlesby, who goes by the name of Bets. She is from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and will help to resettle Eva and Brigit. She takes them to her car where they find a young man named Jacob (Jake) Katz in the back seat. Eva notices that he has "the most extraordinary beautiful hazel-green eyes". Brigit is wary of Jake, but when he begins to play the harmonica, she is distracted and smiles. Eva has noticed they are being watched at the airport and then followed by a man with shiny shoes in a car.

They arrive at Powell House and Eva and Brigit are assigned to the blue room. But when Eva goes to find a phone, she runs into the man with the shiny shoes who's been following them. He warns Eva not to talk about her father to anyone and to hold her end of the bargain, to bring the US government her father. He hands her his card with the name of Mr. Cruickshanks on it. Eva knows this is not his real name. And she also knows her father won't be using his real name either. The United States government wants not only her father but also Anna Ptaszynska who is a killer.

The key to finding her father might just be Dr. Schneider, a doctor at Columbia hospital who had been corresponding with her father over research. Eva believes she must find her father before Cruickshanks and the U.S. government do, or there will be no justice. And justice for herself and for twenty-seven people, whose names she has memorized is what matters most.

Discussion

Bluebird is an intriguing historical fiction novel based on Project Bluebird, a top secret program run by the CIA from 1949 to 1950. Not much is known about Project Bluebird except that it was a mind control program devised to determine if special techniques such as hypnosis and certain drugs could be used in interrogation and conditioning. It also sought to understand if it could be used to obtain accurate information from willing and unwilling subjects, and if it were possible to control the physical and mental actions of willing and unwilling subjects. There were many other goals as well, such as how long post-hypnotic suggestion could be retained, can a person's personality be altered and if so, how long will it hold. Cameron offers more detail in her detailed Author's Note at the back of the novel.

Cameron draws her readers in immediately with the alternating narratives of Inge von Emmerich, daughter of a German doctor who works at a camp, set in the final days of World War II as the Soviet army moves into eastern Germany, and that of Eva Gerst set eighteen months later in August, 1946 as she and a fellow German, Brigit Heidelmann are arriving to start a new life in America. Eventually, these two narratives converge, with readers likely coming to understand the connection between Inge and Eva beforehand.

However, the guessing doesn't stop there: readers begin to wonder who Eva and Brigit really are.  Eva/Inge is on a mission to find her papa, known as "the doctor" at  Sachsenhausen Concentration camp located in Oranienburg, north of Berlin. In the novel when Eva discovers the truth of her papa's work, she is horrified and determined to mete out "justice". As it happens,  the Allies discover her identity as the missing doctor's daughter, and she is offered passage to North America to help locate him. Eva's determined to find him not for the Allies, but so that she can kill him. 

 

As the search goes on for her father, Eva begins to learn more about her father's research and why the U.S. and even the Soviets want him. Cruikshanks sums it up for Eva: "Imagine, Fraulein, if the mind was a moldable object. If memories could be plucked out...and replaced. Imagine if we could say a word, and have a captured soldier walk back across the lines and disable his own country's weapons. If an agent never blew their cover, because they were unaware that they were an agent at all? Imagine if a man like Hitler could have been removed years ago with one of his own officials...."

 

But Eva sees the dangers in such a program. "You could make them 'better', Eva thinks. And who gets to decide who is better and who isn't?" Cruikshanks also believes that Anna Ptaszynska was her father's first and most successful experiment. Who Anna is becomes a source of conflict and personal terror for Eva. At first she believes that Brigit/Annemarie is Anna but then she begins to suspect she might be based on her shadowy memories of events that occurred when she was very young. The files she has stolen from her father's study, seem to confirm this. All of this feeds on the profound conflict Eva is experiencing over her own identity.

 

Eventually, Eva learns the truth from her father about Anna. He tells her that Cruikshanks would love to have an Anna but that he doesn't need her. "He only thinks he does. The process of splitting the personality, of placing a hypnotic suggestion, bending a mind to a certain will, it's all so....messy. Overcomplicated, inefficient, and the outcomes are impossible to predict. When all you really need to make another person do what you wish is the application of the right leverage...."

Eva discovers that her papa has manipulated people to save himself, but  this backfires when he is taken by the Soviets and not the Americans as he had hoped. Eventually, through the efforts of Jake,  Eva learns her true identity and discovers that maybe this justice was for herself and her lost family. 

 

As the story progresses, Eva changes from an uninformed teenager living in a Nazi regime to understanding just what that regime was doing to people it deemed were "less". Her life immediately after the war is consumed by revenge and obtaining what she believes is justice. But in America, events play out in a way that sees justice determined differently than what Eva intended. She also begins to fall in love with Jake. When he leaves for a time, Eva feels fear for the future. In the end, Jake's return suggests a happier, better future. Their love offers readers hope, that in spite of the most horrible of events, there can be a life worth living.

Bluebird is another excellent novel by Sharon Cameron: there's a storyline filled with twists, shady characters, mystery and a touch of romance. There have been so many novels written about World War II, but Cameron has found a new aspect to write about which should peak the interest of those readers looking for something a bit different.

 

For information on Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp: https://www.sachsenhausen-sbg.de/en/history/1936-1945-sachsenhausen-concentration-camp/

Book Details:

Bluebird by Sharon Cameron
New York: Scholastic Press    2021
438 pp.

Replica by Lauren Oliver

Replica is Lauren Oliver's newest young adult offering. The novel is described as a "flip book" with two stories that can be read either separately or interchangeably, one or multiple chapters at a time.

GEMMA
Sixteen year old Gemma Ives lives in a beautiful mansion in North Carolina with her mom, Kristina and her father Geoffrey who co-founded the sixth largest pharmaceutical company, Fine & Ives. Gemma's health has never been good. She's overweight and because of her numerous health issues she's not allowed to participate in gym. Her best friend is April Ruiz, a dark haired beauty.  Both April and Gemma have overly protective parents.  Gemma had resigned herself to spending spring break at home but April managed to convince both their parents to allow them to drive to Bowling Springs, Florida where April's grandparents lived. They plan to leave on Saturday April 19.

When Gemma arrives home from school on the Friday she finds the police at her house investigating a threatening act of vandalism in which a Frankenstein mask was thrown through a window and a note stating "your sick your a monster you deserve to die"  Gemma believes the perpetrator of this was mean girl Chloe DeWitt however she overhears her father and mother talking about the break-in that evening. Her father insists that this is a message for him. From their conversation, Gemma learns that there was a breach at Haven and that "one of them escaped". Although her father believes "it won't live. No way it can live." he is concerned he will be in serious trouble if what is going on at Haven is discovered. That's because he knew what Saperstein was doing with the new funding even though he left the pharmaceutical company, Fine and Ives that he helped found. Gemma has no idea what her parents are discussing but what happened ends up affecting her spring break plans. Because Bowling Springs is only fifty miles from Haven, Gemma's parents decide to pull her from her spring break trip.

Gemma is completely desolate at losing her chance to spend the break with April. On her third day into break she is accosted by a strange man who seems vaguely familiar to her,  who knows her name and who questions her about Haven. She is able to get away and goes into the Quick-Mart where a classmate, Pete Rogers works, to call her mother.

That night, Gemma begins researching into Haven, Dr. Saperstein and her father's former company Fine & Ives. She learns the Haven Institute is a research facility located on Spruce Island in Florida, founded by Richard Haven. Haven died in a car accident the year Gemma was born and was replaced by Dr. Mark Saperstein whom Gemma's father knew. She also discovers that her father's company Fine & Ives Pharmaceuticals had contracted Haven to undertake the company's research but this was years after her father left the company over the direction it was taking. What interests Gemma is the conspiracy websites, specifically HavenFiles.com by Jacob Witz. Witz had tracked down a "Nurse M" who worked at Haven but before he could interview her she was found dead from suicide.

Pete Rogers shows up at Gemma's home that evening to return her change and for a tour of her palatial home. When he mentions that he's leaving for Florida in the morning, Gemma decides that she needs to get to Florida and to Spruce Island to learn what she can about Haven Institute.  Pete agrees to take her and the next morning, Gemma quietly leaves her home and the two drive to Florida. On the way down they learn there has been an explosion off Barrel Key and fire burning out of control on Spruce Island. Pete realizes this is where Gemma is planning to go. 

When Gemma arrives in Barrel Key,  Haven is on fire and a huge demonstration is occurring. She manages to convince Pete to drop her off and Gemma finds a way down to the beach. It is here she meets Jake Witz who tells her he can get her much closer to Haven. He indicates the none of the staff at Haven will talk about what goes on there, except for Nurse M. After spending hours kayaking through the marsh, they hear voices and hide in the mangrove trees. Can Gemma figure out what's really going on at Haven and what her connection is to the facility?

LYRA

Lyra lives in the Haven Institute. Demonstrators on the shores of Barrel Key can often be heard chanting and calling them demons and monsters and Lyra believes they are probably right. She awakens one night to the power going off and the nurses coming to check their room to ensure they are all present. There is a Code Black which means that someone has escaped and Lyra learns later on that is is number 72. 

To Lyra there are two kinds of humans: "natural-born humans" and "human models, males and females made in the laboratory, transferred to the surrogate birthers who lived in the barracks." These latter humans are clones, but at Haven they are called replicas. Each replica is referred to by a model and a number.  Lyra and the other replicas believed the numbers were their names but Dr. O'Donnell  named the replicas after different constellations and she also taught Lyra how to read. One of the replicas named by Dr. O'Donnell is number six who is called Cassiopeia. Eventually, Dr. O'Donnell left Haven because Dr. Saperstein was unhappy with the way she helped the replicas.

Replicas often have serious medical problems such as organ failure. Lyra has been experiencing nausea and vomiting but when she's examined by Nurse Swineherd she doesn't tell her about this. Eventually Lyra's vomiting is discovered and she is taken to the hospital which she calls the Box. Later that night when Lyra feels nauseous she decides to go outside to vomit. When she returns she finds Cassiopeia in an altercation with Dr. Saperstein and the nurses who have discovered she has been hiding objects in her mattress. The next day Lyra decides to hide her special belongings on the north part of the island and it is there she discovers the missing male number 72. It is a this point that there is a huge explosion at Haven. Three bombs are detonated at the facility utterly destroying it. Fleeing, Lyra discovers a badly wounded Cassiopeia.  Dragging Cassiopeia, Lyra and 72 hide in the marsh while soldiers search for survivors. However, Cassiopeia dies and Lyra and 72 are forced to leave her as the guards continue to search for the missing replicas. As they hide in the reeds Lyra and 72 meet two people - another boy and girl and are confronted with an astonishing reality. How can this be and what is the connection of the girl who looks like Cassiopeia to Haven?

Discussion

Replica is marketed as a "flip book" with two separate stories titled Gemma and Lyra that can be read either in alternating chapters or completely separately. I recommend reading these two intertwined stories in alternating chapters, something the book design makes awkward. Replica would have been written in alternating narratives as readers would want to read both stories anyways.

Replica is an interesting story that deals with human cloning and a young girl's attempt to uncover the mystery that involves her father and her past. What she uncovers is a mystery that involves three girls: Gemma, Cassiopeia and Lyra and the revelation that things are not as they seem.

**spoilers**

Gemma and Jake determine that Haven has been experimenting with prions which are an infectious agent composed of protein. Some prions have the ability to replicate by causing properly folded proteins to change into misfolded proteins and therefore lose their functionality. When prions spread throughout the body, usually in the central nervous system, in this manner,  the result is prion disease.  Prion disease develops "when a person or animal ingests the infected tissue, such as a person eating meat from an infected animal" and develops "mad cow disease". Lyra tells Jake and Gemma that the replicas are filled prions and the doctors were always testing their bodies for prion penetration. Jake's internet searches indicate that Dr. Saperstein considers prions as a potential biological warfare agent. Prion disease which is untreatable and fatal could be used to disable terrorist cells. Jake tells Gemma "they've been using the replicas to make prions. They've been growing the disease inside them" This discovery makes Lyra feel anger because she did not ask to be made. Trying to understand and wanting to know the truth however, has given Lyra a purpose in her life. 

Both Gemma and Lyra uncover the shocking truth of their identities. Gemma believes she is a human with a mother and a father while Lyra believes she is a clone or to use the term in the novel, a replica. However, Gemma's efforts to uncover the truth behind Haven and her family's connection to the mysterious facility reveal a completely different reality. The truth is revealed when they meet up with Rick Harliss the man who attempted to grab Gemma near her home. He holds the missing pieces to the puzzle.

Harliss who at one time worked around the Ives's home, reveals to Gemma that her parents lost a baby girl named Emma before she was born. Around this time his wife Aimee had a baby girl named Brandy-Nicole and six months after Brandy's birth, Gemma showed up at the Ives home. Aimee noticed that the new baby looked identical  and that's when Harliss who was beginning to understand what was going on at Haven,  realized that Geoffrey Ives had his dead daughter cloned. Gemma is a replica of the Ives first child, Emma. Harliss also reveals that while he was in de-tox his ex-wife sold Brandy-Nicole but to whom he has no idea. With the information Harliss has given them Gemma realizes that Dr. Saperstein began taking kids whose parents would likely not miss them to use as experimental subjects at Haven when funding became scarce. "...if they couldn't afford to keep making them...Well, he took children he thought wouldn't be missed. He used them to test on. Just long enough to get the money he needed." Based on what Harliss tells her about his daughter, Gemma also realizes that Brandy-Nicole was one of those children and that Lyra is Harliss's missing daughter.  So in fact Gemma is a replica and Lyra is not. Gemma also realizes that her being a clone explains the source of all her health problems.

Learning their true identities is a shock for both Gemma and Lyra. Gemma is horrified. "She was a freak and a monster. There was no doubt about that now." However Pete makes her understand that how she was created does not matter to him as he feels she is "perfect". Knowing that she is replica does not change how he feels about her.  Lyra too is stunned to learn her true origin. She has a father and she's not sure she wants one. Neither Lyra nor 72 have any concept of what a family is nor what it means to love.  Lyra's concept of a mother is only what's she's experienced at Haven. "Her idea of mother looked much like the nurses and the Haven staff. Mother was someone to feed and clothe you and make sure you took your medicines." Her feelings about a father are equally confused. "She didn't want a Father. She had never even known what a father did, had never completely understood why fathers were necessary." Even the fact that she was naturally conceived leaves her confused. "...never had she truly thought about being a person, natural-born, exploded into being by chance." "She didn't want love, not from a stranger, not from a father. She was a replica." When Caelum turns away from Lyra because he is a clone and she is not, she like Pete did with Gemma, tells him that it doesn't matter because they each chose the other unconditionally.

In this way, Replica explores how modern biotechnology has influenced how we think about ourselves and what makes us human and how others might view those made with those technologies. It considers how modern technologies undertaken purely for the pursuit of knowledge without considering the ethical issues involved can be dehumanizing and immoral.  While Oliver considers on a personal level how clones and natural born humans might view one another she also touches on how doctors and researchers might view clones and human experimentation too. For example at Haven the scientists and nurses and doctors do not consider the replicas to be persons but research subjects with no rights. By creating entire batches that die, such as the yellow batch, they develop a cavalier attitude towards human life. Their attitudes are reflected in how Lyra views herself.

Lyra does not consider herself a human person because this is what she's been told. "But that's what they were: bodies. Human and yet not people. She hadn't so far been able to figure out why. She looked, she thought, like a normal person. So did the other female replicas. They'd been made from normal people, and even birthed from them." Likewise the staff at Haven also do not consider 72, Lyra or Cassiopeia to be persons either, often referring to them by the pronoun, "it".  Lyra believes there is something substantially different, "some invisible quality"  between herself and normal humans. Lyra hates "that she could look like a human, and yet she was not human, and they could tell."

When Gemma and Lyra meet neither can understand the other. Because Gemma looks like Cassiopeia, Lyra assumes (correctly as it turns out) someone "made" her and that she is a replica and that Gemma does not know she is a clone. Gemma and Jake's kindness towards Lyra confuse her especially when Gemma identifies Lyra and 72 as "people". "We're not people," Lyra said. "You said, 'These poor people have been through god knows what.' But we're replicas. God didn't make us. Dr. Saperstein did. He's our god."

Lyra's view of her body is not healthy either. She hasn't considered the beauty of the human body which she saw only as parts. "She'd never noticed how beautiful bodies could be. She'd thought of them only as parts, machine components that serviced a whole." 72 also has a distorted view of his body. He's only ever been called by a number and he admits that when he was a child he thought he might be an animal.

Oliver repeatedly references God as a theme in her novel. Lyra refers to Dr. Saperstein on more than one occasion as god even sometimes as a God with a sneer on his face. When Lyra had seen an alligator near the grounds at Haven, she thinks about how God made this beast but not her. "God made that creature, that monster with a taste for blood, and loved it. But he had not made her."  To Lyra, being made by a loving God matters. In her narrative, Gemma notes how beautiful one of her classmates Chloe is compared to herself and thinks, "Like she had been formed by a god with an eye for detail, whereas Gemma had been slapped together haphazardly by a drunk." The implication is that man playing god in creating human beings in a lab is messy and haphazard in contrast to when God creates, he does it with beauty and perfection.

There's also a hint in the novel that perhaps there was more than just cloning going on at Haven when Lyra remembers seeing the rats in their cages with their "strangely human fingers." 


Overall Replica is a well written novel that holds reader's interest with its numerous twists and action sequences. Replica is the first book in Lauren Oliver's newest series. The next book will be titled Simulation which the author has stated will be more complicated.

Book Details:

Replica by Lauren Oliver (Laura Schechter)
New York: HarperCollins Children's Books     2016
519 pp.

Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd

Her Dark Curiosity picks up Juliet Moreau's story several months after she returns to England. Previously in The Madman's Daughter, she had barely escaped her father's island and its terrible beast men created by her father. The man she loved, Montgomery, her father's assistant had stayed behind to try to tend to the creatures. Juliet was picked up, adrift in the dinghy, three weeks later by a ship bound for Cape Town, South Africa. From there she traveled to Dakur and onto Lisbon, Spain. Desperately ill during the last part of her journey, Juliet was cared for by her best friend, Lucy Radcliffe.

But in London when Dr. Hastings learned of her whereabouts, he had Juliet thrown in jail for attacking him. Fortunately, Juliet was rescued by her father's colleague, Professor von Stein who successfully had the charges dropped. Von Stein was the colleague who reported Juliet's father to the police for his unethical experimentation/research. He is now determined to save Juliet and has taken her into his home.  Despite his kindness to her, Juliet has never told the Professor about her father's continued experimentation nor his creation of the beast men. She has never told him about the creation of Edward Prince, "a young man created from a handful of animal parts chemically transmuted using human blood." Edward loved Juliet but he was a man who contained a beast within, who at any moment could take control and murder.

Juliet too has her own secrets - the most important of which involves her condition. Born with a deformed spine, her father straightened her spine and replaced several of her missing organs with those from a fawn. Her body is always attempting to reject the foreign tissue, causing Juliet bouts of dizziness and tremors. To prevent this Juliet has always taken daily injections, but now they are no longer working.

To try to find a serum that works, she has rented a small attic in a lodging house in Shoreditch. She feels more at home in the attic with its rustic atmosphere, where she can be herself and where she uses animal parts from a butcher to try to replicate the serum her father made for her.

Nevertheless, living most of her time at the professor's home, Juliet must try to adjust to London society. As Juliet continues to try to assimilate back into London society, the city is gripped in terror by four gruesome murders. Each of the bloody murders has seen the victims badly mauled, leading newspapers to dub the murderer the Wolf of Whitechapel. Upon learning the names of the victims, Juliet is horrified to discover that they are all people she knew and who had harmed her in some way.

Determined to examine the victims, Juliet sneaks into the Kings College of Medical Research morgue. From the type of injuries, she comes to the conclusion that Edward Prince did not die on the island, but has survived and managed to travel to London.

Meanwhile, Juliet's friend, Lucy, reveals that she has two suitors, neither of whom she particularly likes; Inspector John Newcastle who is leading the investigation into the Wolf of Whitechapel murders and a strange man named Henry who has a strange appeal to Lucy. When Juliet meets Henry, who goes by the name of Henry Jaykll from Finland, she recognizes him at once as Edward Prince.

Juliet confronts Edward in private and tells him he must stop the Beast within him from murdering. Edward reveals to Juliet that Montgomery is alive and has been hunting him on the island. Scared he would kill Montgomery, Edward escaped the island to come to London in the hopes of finding a cure for his transformation into the Beast. Edward admits to loving Juliet, telling her that the Beast loves her too. He is finding it more and more difficult to control the beast, that the beast is able to retain his form longer each time and that he feels he is losing himself to the beast. Juliet takes Edward to her attic room begging him to chain himself there. During this time, Professor von Stein's neice, Elizabeth arrives from Scotland. She tells Juliet that both of their families have secrets in their past.

Shortly after Edward begins staying at the attic, Juliet arrives to find Edward covered in blood with torn clothing. Juliet realizes that the Beast has stuck again. Despite the horror of this, Juliet and Edward become lovers. In the morning however, Juliet regrets her actions of the previous night and tries to explain to Edward that she still loves Montgomery. This causes the Beast to reappear and attack her. Juliet escapes but vows to cure Edward and save him from the Beast.

The night of the Radcliffe masquerade, Juliet and Lucy share the secrets they have both been keeping from one another. Lucy reveals that her father has in his possession, letters with strange information about Juliet's father's research. Since Lucy's father is an investor, Juliet now believes he has been financing her father's research on the island. Juliet reveals to Lucy Henry's identity and origins. The two girls decide to search Lucy's father's study but find little to help them understand further what the connection is between the two men.

It is at the masquerade that the mystery deepens further; Juliet meets Montgomery who explains that he has received notes from both Edward and the Beast stating that Edward wants to find a cure, the Beast is hoping to experience all the "pleasures and pains" of life. While talking with Montgomery, they overhear a conversation between Lucy's father, Radcliffe, and another man which reveals that they know about the existence of Edward and that they are attempting to capture him at the ball.

Juliet and Montgomery are in a race against time to find Edward. For Juliet, time is running out to find a cure for Edward and to save him from both Montgomery and Radcliffe and the King's Club.

Once again, Megan Shepherd has crafted a unique story that takes many of the elements of the classic novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to create completely new story. From this novel, it appears she will then segue into Frankenstein, weaving together a trilogy that encompasses three classic gothic/horror novels.

Both the characters and the storyline are compelling in this novel, as they were in The Madman's Daughter. The forbidden romance between Edward and Juliet is deeply disturbing and not surprisingly, Shepherd continues to develop the love triangle which was hinted at in the first novel, with the reappearance of Montgomery.

The characters of Edward and Juliet are primarily the focus of this novel. It would have been wonderful to see more development of both Lucy and Elizabeth, both of whom are interesting characters. Hopefully we will see more of Elizabeth in the third novel as she appears to be a linking character whose purpose is to transition the storyline into the third novel.

The essence though of Her Dark Curiosity is the relationship between Edward and Juliet and the tension they experience. Edward tries to convince Juliet that he has more in common with her than does Montgomery; that they are both creations of her father and are part animal. This is only partly true, since Juliet is the biological daughter of Dr. Moreau but Edward is made out of animal and human. Edward is referring to the fact that he comes from animal parts while Juliet had animal organs grafted into her. He also suggests that her civilized behaviour is only a veneer that covers the animal inside. This theme is demonstrated using some interesting symbolism in the novel; Juliet's corset becomes a symbol of her civilized side which both Edward and the Beast ask her to remove. This suggests that Edward is not quite so separate from the Beast as he leads Juliet to believe. Juliet's corset is symbolic of the social norms which prevent her from acting on her baser impulses. Once Juliet removes the corset (her civilized nature) she is easily seduced by Edward - in fact quite willingly, despite him being covered in blood after the Beast committed a murder. What kind of woman would make love to a man who has just murdered someone and is drenched in blood?

The title of the novel refers to Juliet's curiosity about herself, but more importantly, about Edward and the Beast. The Beast accuses her of sabotaging her own attempts to develop a cure as a result of her dark curiosity.

"You're dying of curiosity -- that's why some deep part of you is sabotaging any attempts for a cure. You're desperate to know what you'll become, and as far as Edward goes, let's just come out with the truth, shall we: You don't want to cure him, either, not deep down, because the one who fascinates you is me."

Earlier in the novel Juliet demonstrates a dark curiosity about Edward. She is curious about what Edward experiences when he transforms into the beast; what he feels and what he might remember. This curiosity upsets Edward greatly when he sees Juliet's desire to know more because he is repulsed by the Beast and wants to destroy him.

Juliet also recognizes her unnatural curiosity. "A part of me thinks he was right. There is something unnatural about me. I can feel it, deep inside. I don't care for the things other girls do. I'm curious about things I shouldn't be. I'm so fascinated by Father's research that I can hardly stop thinking about it. I feel like a monster for thinking that."

Overall, this novel was engaging with its decidedly gothic tone, but has disturbing elements too. Due to the graphic violence and sexual content of the book, it is recommended for older teens.

Book Details:
Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd
New York: HarperCollins Children's Books    2014
422 pp.

Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

Rose Justice has been flying planes since she was twelve years old, so it's no surprise that she has signed up to be part of the British Air Transport Auxiliary based out of Southampton, England. With the help of her Uncle Roger, Rose has managed to get through the red tape to work as a pilot flying new planes for the Royal Air Force to different bases in England and even overseas. It is 1944 and the Allied Invasion of Normandy has just happened a few months earlier. Rose feels lucky to be a part of the war effort and is glad she has so much flying experience prior to coming to England but she wants to go overseas.

Living in Hamble, Hampshire, Rose like everyone else in England, is trying to cope with the new V-1 bomb, pilotless planes that are bombs. These flying bombs are called vengeance weapons by the Germans, but the British give them all kinds of strange names including "doodlebugs". The bombs cause terror among the British because they can be heard thirty miles away. There is an eerie silence once the engine stops and then the bomb drops and explodes.

In September, 1944, Rose gets her wish, and arrives in Reims, France. Rose taxied someone important over to France and is taking a Spitfire back to Southampton when she encounters a flying bomb over Epernay, France. Knowing the terrible destruction these weapons cause, Rose decides to go after the bomb to take it down and while she succeeds, she is intercepted by German Luftwaffe who force her to turn around and fly deep into Germany.

When she lands in Germany, Rose is interrogated and then forced to fly to Neubrandeburg, a satellite camp for the infamous women's concentration camp, Ravensbruck. Conditions at the camp are dehumanizing and filthy, with the women starving.

After surviving the quarantine isolation, Rose is sent to work in the Siemens factory making the electrical relays for the V-1 bomb fuses. When she realizes what she is doing, Rose refuses to work anymore. This act of defiance gets her sent back to Ravensbruck where she is brutally beaten and placed in Block 32.

It is at this point she meets the "rabbits" as they are called - several of the Polish women who have been experimented on and are now crippled. Rose is completely horrified by what she learns; that seventy-four women have been experimented on and that these women are slated to be executed. Rose forms a friendship with petite, seventeen year old Roza Czajkowska, who was imprisoned when she was fourteen for working in the Polish resistance. When Rose meets these women they tell her that they have managed to get word outside the camp about what is going on. Rose tells Roza and others that she has heard about them on the BBC, but that everyone assumed this was anti-German propaganda because it was so unbelievable. Rose and several other women she meets, Karolina, Lisette and Irina, all work together to help one another survive the brutal roll calls and the death lists. They make Rose promise "to tell the world" if she survives.

Discussion

Rose Under Fire is a very powerful novel about one girl's experiences as a prisoner of war near the end of World War II. The novel is divided into three sections, Southampton, Ravensbruck, and Nuremburg. Rose narrates her experiences through each of these three phases.

In Southampton, Rose is an new pilot, fresh from America, young and inexperienced in the realities of war. Despite the bombs and devastation of London, Rose has yet to experience the effects of war on a deeply personal level. That changes in the second section of the novel.

In Ravensbruck, the story jumps ahead to April 17, 1945 and the reader knows that Rose is now in Paris. However, Rose is so traumatized by what happened to her that she cannot speak about it and instead writes everything in her journal. Wein makes use of flashbacks to have Rose tell her story and although not explicit, Wein does not shy away from portraying the details of camp life.

In Nuremberg, Rose struggles to recover from her experiences, to live a normal life, to come to terms with the loss of her friends at Ravensbruck, and to see justice done. She wants to find out what happened to her friends, Roza and Irina, whom she became separated from. She is afraid to tell the world, as she promised because she is so traumatized.

By separating Rose's story into these three sections, Wein does an excellent job demonstrating how Rose's experiences changed her forever.This is expressed through Rose's poetry which Wein places throughout the story. These poems are in fact the poetry of several poets including most notably,  Edna St. Vincent Millay, a famous American poet.

While the names of the "Rabbits" in this story are fictional, many other characters did exist including Dr. Leo Alexander, Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier, the four Polish women who testified at the Nuremburg Doctor's Trial as well as the doctors, Fritz Fischer, Karl Gebhardt, and Herta Oberheuser.

Wein effectively captures the brutality and horror of existing in Ravensbruck, while also portraying the humanity of those who suffered there. This is historical fiction at its best. The subject is heavy, but readers will come away with a deeper understanding of the true horror of the Nazi regime, the depths of suffering inflicted on all of Europe,  and the price our parents and grandparents paid to win the war.

Elizabeth Wein has a detailed bibliography at the back of her novel which provides both online and print resources. For those looking for further information on this historical event, the following websites may be of interest:

For more on Ravensbruck you can check out this Canadian website from the University of Toronto,  Ravensbruck, including information on the real seventy-four women who were the experimental subjects of SS Professor Karl Gebhardt: 74 Cases of Medical Experiments conducted on the Polish Political Prisoners in Women's Concentration Camp: http://individual.utoronto.ca/jarekg/Ravensbruck/index.html

The actual presentation by Dr. Leo Alexander can be found here: http://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=1961
This is a black and white video of this segment of the Nuremberg Doctor's Trial.

The Ravensbruck Memorial Site can be found at http://www.ravensbrueck.de/mgr/neu/english/index.htm