Review: The War that Saved My Life (War #1) by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

1 star for The War that Saved My Life (War book 1) by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.

The story is about a girl who is born with a clubfoot. She and her brother are evacuated from London to the countryside during World War II. Away from their abusive mother, the two siblings start their lives anew, until..

This novel is totally not what I have expected. I will say it comes as a surprise and a bad one at that. The mother in this book is irredeemable to the point of absurd and the turnaround in the children's fortune is too good to be believable, even for a novel. In short, the story comes across as pretty far-fetched and makes for an amateurish work of fiction.

While I have no qualms about reading stories on single-parent families, this is one book that I am not comfortable with. It features a single mother with her two young children, 10-year old Ada and 6-year old Jamie. That is totally fine. What is not fine is the way the mother abuses her children, the older girl especially, physically, verbally, emotionally and mentally. The bad mother not only feels ashamed of her own child who is born with severe physical disability, she has no regard for her child's needs and well-being. Though the relationship between the disabled sister and brother is good, the abusive nature of their mother cast a dark cloud over the entire novel.

This is a children's book that does not promote family values. I find it hard to read and even harder to like. I do not recommend it to children.


Publisher: Dial Books; 1 edition
Publication date: 8 Jan 2015

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Ten-year-old Ada has never left her one-room apartment. Her mother is too humiliated by Ada’s twisted foot to let her outside. So when her little brother Jamie is shipped out of London to escape the war, Ada doesn’t waste a minute—she sneaks out to join him.

So begins a new adventure of Ada, and for Susan Smith, the woman who is forced to take the two kids in. As Ada teaches herself to ride a pony, learns to read, and watches for German spies, she begins to trust Susan—and Susan begins to love Ada and Jamie. But in the end, will their bond be enough to hold them together through wartime? Or will Ada and her brother fall back into the cruel hands of their mother?

*Blurb from Goodreads*

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