
hello everyone! today i am going to be talking about when the world was ours by Liz Kessler. i gave this book 5/5 stars. first off, happy pub date to this book! but also, thank you so much netgalley and aladdin publishers for an arc of this book! and also, this is going to be an honest review, and it is no way changed by the publishers or the author.
trigger warnings- confinement, hate crime, physical abuse, antisemitism, child death, genocide, violence, grief, murder, bullying, and this book also follows the themes of WW2 and a lot of stuff about Hitler.
first thing first, i honestly really liked that all of our characters are from different walks of life. granted, they all are the same age, i believe they start out at 9 ish, and then they grow up throughout the book. and elsa is Jewish, who moved away from vienna and her dad went to fight. then, we get leo, who is also Jewish and still lives in vienna with his parents. and finally max, who isn’t Jewish, but his dad went to go fight for hitler.
with that being said, i really enjoyed getting to see all these different characters, instead of just having one pov or three povs and they are all super similar. i enjoyed seeing each character and their personal struggle with everything, since they were all different. and just to see how far elsa and leo were going to keep them and their family safe, since of course, they are Jewish, and i really enjoyed it.
but, i will say, i didn’t really enjoy max’s chapters. like, i feel it was mostly about hitler, which was cool to read about, but i wish it had something more. like, leo and elsa’s chapters were good, since i feel like we got enough back story while also seeing the hardships they faced and all the hell they went through. and i honestly enjoyed seeing them, and also their writing was just better anyway.
with that being said, i was honestly scared that there was going to be kind of dumbed down or something since this is middle grade. but, i feel like this story doesn’t hold back and still keeps the emotions, granted it’s nothing like lovely war, but it still has the emotions in it. and i really feel like we got a hard look into them, and i really think that Kessler did an amazing job with showing the hard parts about this war.
but, i do feel like it was cool that this book had younger characters. like, i feel like a lot of WW2 books either have characters that are a bit older, and not Jewish, so getting to see them start out when they are around 9, i really liked it. and since this is a middle grade i feel like more people can connect with it in my mind.
like, i feel like that we could see the emotion in this book. like, i feel like Kessler really showed what is happening, and what was going threw their head and what was actually happening to them. so, i really liked that we got to see everything happen and also just to deal with what was happening. and also, i feel like if it was lighter, it would honestly work if it had more emotion, which i honestly liked so much.
with that being said, i do feel like there is the harder scenes to read, but also just having the good and light hearted moments. like, getting to see elsa and getting her friend and also just getting a cat together and just adopting this cat and trying to feet it together. and also, seeing leo get so happy that he can keep his mom safe and overcoming different obstacles and getting them to england. and i mean, i feel like these scenes are really cool to see these, since there are the harder scenes, and it was just a good balance.
but, i honestly really liked Max as a character, to a degree. i mean, i liked him, but i wouldn’t say that he was the best character in this book. and, i didn’t personal liked that it was a 3rd person POV, which is cool, since i feel like he did have the harder story to read about, and also just have the harder things to talk about. since, he likes working for hitler, but kind of wishes he has his friends that he misses. and also just try to figure out what to do next.
i do feel like these characters were so easy to be able to connect to. i mean, the book opens up to this happy moment with the kids, and then it gets hard. so, i feel like getting the hard moment, it was just easier to connect to them. personally, i think that this whole happy moment gave us this look of them as characters and people before the war, and honestly it was just so cool to get them.
and i also think that it was cool that this is non fiction, but like not non fiction. like, it was cool to be able to see this story, but also just to kind of read about her family history, since i believe that they do feature her grandparents, i believe that they were the Stewarts in here. so, i thought that it was cool to see them, and honestly that she could write this book loosely based off her history, plus this was kinda non fiction, which i liked.
with that being said, i do feel like the ending was so heartbreaking. like, it was so sad and heartbreaking, granted i didn’t cry, but i’m not a big book / movie crier, so i wasn’t the biggest crier in the world. but, i do know that a lot of people are criers, so i would probably be ready to cry if you are into that. and i would definitely would get the tissues if you probably will cry. and i mean, i think that it would be a tear jerker, and i think that the ending wasn’t going to be happy, but still.
anyway, i hope you enjoyed this post! i honestly, really liked this book and it was just such a good book, and it was just so amazing. and i honestly hope that more and more people read this book, since it was just so amazing and that everyone needs to read this more. and if this book doesn’t become a best seller, then the system is rigid. and she also needs a standing ovation right now.


