Tag: historical

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

Three Muses

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By: Martha Anne Toll

Three Muses is a love story that enthralls: a tale of Holocaust survival venturing through memory, trauma, and identity, while raising the curtain on the unforgiving discipline of ballet. In post-WWII New York, John Curtin suffers lasting damage from having been forced to sing for the concentration camp kommandant who murdered his family. John trains to be a psychiatrist, struggling to wrest his life from his terror of music and his past. Katya Symanova climbs the arduous path to Prima Ballerina of the New York State Ballet, becoming enmeshed in an abusive relationship with her choreographer, who makes Katya a star but controls her life. When John receives a ticket to attend a ballet featuring Katya Symanova, a spell is cast. As John and Katya follow circuitous paths to one another, fear and promise rise in equal measure. Song, Discipline, and Memory weave their way through love and loss, heartbreak and triumph

NOTE: Thank you to Netgalley and Regal House Publishing for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. This review may contain spoilers. 

Three Muses takes you on a journey through time. It’s also a journey through the lives of Katya Symanova and John Curtin, both broken, both haunted, seeking to find their place and purpose in their worlds. 

This book starts out as two separate stories. We meet Janko, later known as John, a small boy given up by his mother to the Nazis hoping his talent for singing saves his life. As he sings for those who killed his family, a chasm forms deep in his heart separating him from his love for song. Upon rescue, he travels to America where he is placed in the care of a family who recently lost their son in the war. They become his replacement family and he becomes their replacement son. He adopts the name of John Curtin and becomes a psychiatrist. 

John was my favorite character in this story. I loved how his first patient really was himself. He’s shy and courageous and respectful and so kind and he’s all these things while dealing with PTSD from WWII. I love how we get to see his transition from a scared little boy to a young man trying to please his new American family and finally, into an adult. John struggles to understand the meaning of love in all its selfless facets until he meets Katya, who helps him understand that to love is to sacrifice. 

The other story is Katherine Sillman who is gifted with ballet lessons after her mother’s death. As she grows into a proper ballerina, she catches the eye of the choreographer/composer, Boris Yanakov, who changes her name to Katya Symannova, putting the curtain up between her and everyone else in her life but him. As he grooms her, she becomes entranced with him and by him. 

Katya is probably my least favorite character in this story. While we do see a beautiful character arc and wonderful development, I cringe at the idea of any woman losing herself in a man to the degree Katya did. She allowed him to rob her of everything, her friends, her family (in a way) and finally, her relationship with John. He literally chains her to him for the duration of her life. It was sad to me to see her disregard warnings from her friend, Maya, and completely forget she even had a father. She only remembers him when he gets hurt and needs help. 

I also found her to be a little self-serving in her relationship with John. He said she gave him a lot when he said she gave him back his Papa. However, I can’t really see where she gave more than he did. The deception of it all was upsetting also in light of her relationship with Boris. John was too sweet to hurt that way. 

I will always always love when authors take their time telling a story. It’s a gift to be able to do this without making the book too long or causing it to lag in places. I didn’t have any fault with the pace of this book. It picks you up and takes you on this lovely, very visual, highly emotional yet gentle ride. I felt all the feels. And the language, the imagery was simply stunning. 

I loved how the two stories converged and then disconnected with only the very smallest tether left at the end. Wonderfully written. 

My rating: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

The Memory Keeper of Kyiv

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By: Erin Litteken

It’s the 1930s and Stalin’s troops have invaded Ukraine and inflicted a man-made famine that claimed millions of lives. Katya is a young girl in a small village affected by the famine. She watches as friends and neighbors disappear until it finally hits closer to home than she ever dreamed. What starts out as something the village hopes will eventually go away if they just yield to government demands turns into a fight to survive as food initially becomes scarce and then non-existent. Through it all, love holds Katya and her family steadfast to themselves and to each other. 

Years later, a young widow named Cassie travels with her daughter to live with her grandmother hoping for a new start. She discovers a journal belonging to her grandmother which takes her on a journey to the past. 

This book broke my heart in a thousand pieces. It was so well written and so beautiful and so sad – I read it in on. 

I’m ashamed to admit that I had no clue the Holodomor ever happened. I knew atrocities were committed under Stalin but I had no clue of the total brutality of it. This was a bit of a history lesson for me and boy, was it hard to read. The choices people had to make and just the total definition of survival was so painful to read. 

My dad lived through WW2 while in Italy under Mussolini. He’s told me stories of how my grandmother and him struggled to survive. They lost their home and if it weren’t for the fact that my grandmother was a master seamstress, they wouldn’t have eaten. Like one of the characters in the book, my dad still doesn’t let food go to waste and will eat anything. As a young girl I used to ask if there was any food he didn’t like and he would say no because he remembers not knowing when he was going to eat next. So part of me was thinking about that knowing the author took from her own family history to build the story. Somehow, we are all a part of our family history and I loved how well this was honored in this story. 

There are two stories being told simultaneously. 

Cassie is still reeling from her husband’s sudden death, as is her daughter. One year into her grief journey and she still struggles with immediate loss, how to cope and move forward and how to help her daughter as she grieves. Her mom suggests she move in with her grandmother, who is beginning to have some dementia-type symptoms. Cassie agrees hoping the change will elevate her from a grieving widow to some sort of functional human being again. 

While there, she find’s Bobby’s (her grandmother) journal. The journal chronicles Bobby’s life in Ukraine starting at the time of Stalin’s invasion. 

The story transport you back in time where we meet young Katia and we learn of the Holodomor. Katya’s story is a story of survival but it’s also a story of love – not the mushy kind of love full of long, slow kisses (although there is that) but the kind of love that’s hard where choices to love and survive make you want to hate those closest to you.  

I fell completely in love with Cassie and Katya. Both women are strong survivors of life’s circumstances. Neither had a choice but to go forward in the best way they knew how. I really loved how Cassie grew and healed as she read Bobby’s journal. I felt like she was forever changed, taking a chance on new love and the idea of life beyond loss. 

Katya’s story was heartbreaking in the extreme. I felt each tear and tear of her heart. Katya is a heroine of the past whose story should not ever be forgotten as though she were more than a fictional character. History tells us this character was based on many such survivors. 

For the beauty of this story, the history behind it and all the emotions this book puts you through, I highly recommend it! So very well done! 

My rating: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: 

NOTE – Thanks to Netgalley and Boldwood Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.