This was a DNF for me. I have read a lot of WWII so the bar is set very high and this one fell short for me. The characters seemed flat, the plot was nothing that I hadn't read before and the worst part was it had one of my two least favorite "crutches": the inability to speak (the other is amnesia).

I read and enjoyed Rimmer's Before I Let You Go so hopefully I will find luck with her other novels.

This was my first book by this author, It was pretty enjoyable. I would give this book a 3.5 star rating! It was a pretty Quick and easy read!

This beautiful and heart-wrenching story is easily the very best book I've read this year! Kelly Rimmer is an author I will look for in future! Snippets of the author's family history are woven through this fictional account of Alina, Tomasz, and Saul's story in the town that Kelly Rimmer's ancestors lived.

This tale is told through modern-day Alice's lens as a modern woman juggling the needs of her complicated family and by Alina as a young woman battling the hardships of living in Poland during the Second World War. Alice, although not understanding, is gripped by her dying Grandmother's plea for her to find Tomasz. But because of the bond, the two of them share, Alice flies to Poland to look for this man.

I cannot recommend this book more strongly to those who enjoy reading about this terrible time in human history. The author transports the reader so vividly into the war's horror and the most tender of sacrificial love stories.

I am grateful to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC, for this, my honest review.

3.75 out of 5 stars

The Things We Cannot Say is a dual timeline story taking place in the current day and during WWII.

The contemporary timeline follows Alice as she struggles with her challenging family life as her grandmother (Babcia) is hospitalized. Alice is particularly close to her Babcia so when her Babcia makes an unusual request that Alice go to Poland to make some discoveries before she passes away, Alice is dumbfounded but intrigued.

The second storyline follows Alina Dziak, living in a small village in Poland which is about to be invaded by Nazis and follows her story until 1942.

I don’t often enjoy stories with stories taking place during multiple timelines because it is almost inevitable that I will enjoy one of the timelines and have to put up with the other timeline(s) until it switches back. Though I was a bit more invested in the WWII timeline, I was still enjoying the contemporary story with Alice and didn’t feel that itch to fast-forward to get back to the other story. The author did a fantastic job of making both story lines interesting enough with characters that had me invested in their outcomes.

Although both Alina and Alice annoyed me at times, they felt like real people. They were flawed and made mistakes but that made them more human because they didn’t always react in a heroic or likeable way.

The only big criticism I have is that I felt like side character, Saul Weiss got shafted in the story. I can’t go into his role without revealing spoilers but I wish the author did more with him.

I received a digital review copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review but I ended up listening to the finished copy as an audiobook so I am reviewing the finished copy instead of the uncorrected proof.

This is a moving story set in Poland during WWII but it also shifts to present day America and follows the life of a woman who is setting out to investigate her grandmother's past. I loved this book and I am already recommending it to other readers, especially those who are drawn to historical fiction set during WWII and the Holocaust. If you ever wanted to know what it would be like for a Polish farmer in occupied Poland during WWII, you may learn something from reading this new title by Kelly Rimmer.

One of the best books I have ever read!! This book will stay on my mind for a long time . I have read many books about the war and the effect of it on the families that lived though it, and I must say this book seemed so real at a
point I looked on line to make sure I was reading a fictional book.
I will be recommending this to anyone I can as a must read . The only negative I can say is it was a bit uncomfortable reading the last part of the book while getting my hair dyed, with tears freely flowing down my face.

Thank you NetGalley and Graydon House Books for allowing me to read this advance copy.
This is the first book that I've read by Kelly Rimmer and it definitely will not be my last. I'm looking forward to her next book.
There were parts of the book that dragged a little for me but I was determined to keep reading. I'm happy that I continued. You will need some tissues when you read this book. I will definitely recommend this book to others who read World War II novels..

What an emotional book. It almost leaves you silent. I do get a bit lost when books switch from past to present but it was still beautifully written. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC

I unfortunately couldn't finish this book. It wasn't bad - it simply wasn't for me. I usually enjoy dual timeline historical fiction, especially ones connecting generations of family. This one just didn't hold my attention and make me want to make it to the end.

The problem may have been the lack of purpose and clarity. I made it to 25% and still wasn't quite sure why I was reading this story or what I was supposed to learn about the characters. I then skimmed to about 35% and still wasn't captured by the story, so I decided to give up at that point. I was only mildly intrigued by the mysteriousness of the WWII storyline, so not enough to keep me going.

The present day storyline had a lot going on and would have benefited from the problems being presented more clearly and in a less scattered manner. I didn't feel very connected to Alice and lost attention when reading her sections of the book. Neither storyline appealed to me in the end, and I didn't feel an emotional connection to any of the characters.

The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer

What can I say about this book? It has all the things I want and love in a historical fiction. Intriguing characters, fantastic setting, love, and a little bit of mystery.

It took me a while to warm up to Alice, who is the main character that we are following from the present timeline. She stressed me out. But her adventure in this story made me really appreciate her growth and understanding.

On the other hand, I was instantly invested in Alina's story. Alina is trying to survive in Nazi occupied Poland. Hoping and praying that her fiance is still alive. Alina is one of those characters that sticks with you. She's brave but also completely human.

What follows is a beautiful story about family and sacrifice. I can't even begin to understand how hard it was to live and survive during the height of Hiltler's reign. The choices you would have to make. The Things We Cannot Say takes on a unique view of those choices. It's a heart-wrenching but dazzling story. It's made it's way on to my list of favorite historical fictions. And that is a very exclusive list. I recommend this book to all historical fiction fans! It's a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ for me. Just remember to bring the tissues!

Another historical fiction that is set during World War II. This one has a unique setting of Poland and also has a more current storyline to help drive it forward, but this wasn't one of my favorite World War II historicals.

For me the part that I enjoyed was the unraveling that Alice had to do to help her grandmother find peace in her final days. I loved the twists and turns that made this historical fiction more of a mystery. I have to admit to rolling my eyes to the infliction that causes the title and keeps Alice and her grandmother from speaking straight to each other and the fact that they hadn't spoken before, but with fiction, I had to suspend reality and just read the story.

The historical storyline was hard to read. The devastation that was happening on these farms in Poland and being so close to devastation made me cringe, it was almost a little too graphic and hard to read. The moments that I enjoyed most were watching Alina's parents resist in the smallest of ways, even in little moments they were trying to resist the German regime and take care of their own.

I like Kelly Rimmer's writing and would absolutely read another book by her. I just may be overdone on this time period for awhile.

🌺BOOK REVIEW - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️🌺
🌺As readers, we have that special gift that we know within the first few pages of a book whether or not we are going to love it. Most of us can probably predict the exact rating a book will get merely after the first chapter. This held true for The Things We Cannot Say. Reduced to tears in chapter one as I was immersed into a struggling mom’s life and then soon after flashing back to the heartfelt love story in pre-WWII Poland...it all just tore at my heartstrings. THIS was the historical fiction book that I’ve been craving and it delivered from start to finish. ⁣
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🌺Alice is a stay at home mother whose identity has been all consumed by her work-obsessed husband, her prodigy daughter and her son who is on the autistic spectrum. When her grandmother Hanna has a stroke, Alice’s world is flipped upside down when she requests that Alice go back to her hometown in Poland to piece together the holes in Hanna’s war torn life. ⁣
⁣
🌺Alina has spent her life on her parents farm in Poland living the carefree life of a teenager in love. Tomasz is her world and they commit to be married soon after his medical training is complete. As the Nazi invasion begins, Alina’s perfect future is destroyed as Tomasz becomes deeply involved in the war. Her hopes, her dreams, the story she envisioned has been replaced by a world she can never truly understand. ⁣The lives of Alice, Hanna, Alina and Tomasz interconnect in ways that are beyond heart-breaking, endearing, heart-warming and tragic...and the impact of these lives cannot and will not be forgotten. ⁣
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🌺I cried all the tears. All of them. At times I couldn’t even read because simple sentences would just grab my heart full force. The modern day story was just as powerful as the story of Nazi occupied Poland...which is a very difficult feat to accomplish. To say I fell in love with these characters is an understatement. I’m still thinking about them and they still bring me to tears. This is a book that will stay in my library all cozied up next to The Book Thief, Sarah’s Key and The Nightingale. One of the best historical fiction books I’ve ever read.

5 EPIC Stars!
Kelly Rimmer is one of my favorite contemporary fiction authors of all time and I’m always anxiously awaiting her new releases. I’m not a big fan of historical fiction, so when Rimmer came out with The Things We Cannot Say, I was a bit unsettled and worried that I would not enjoy it as much as her previous novels. After finishing this book, I was left speechless because how do you write or talk about something that is pure perfection and somehow give it justice? I can’t! What I can say is this, The Things We Cannot Say is one of the most heartbreaking and breathtaking love stories I have ever read! These characters will stay with me for a very long time!

Thank you to the publisher via Netgalley for an e-arc copy in exchange for an honest review.

May 2019 - Nerd Herd Book Club.

This was a really sweet book. I loved both timelines, and thought it was all really well done. I loved the main characters, I just really enjoyed it.

The title of this book kind of describes how I would review it, because it broke me so much that I honestly don't even know what to say. I am a huge Kelly Rimmer and this book was absolutely brilliant! I read this with a group of girls and everyone seemed to love it just as much as I did, even readers who don't read historical fiction. Her writing has a way of sucking you in and I felt like the story was almost sacred. By the end, I truly felt like my heart was on the floor, so you are being warned! I think Kelly Rimmer is so underappreciated in the fiction world and I really hope more people will pick up her books because she is an absolute favorite, must-read author for me. If you love historical fiction, or if you have never picked one up in your life, please, please give this one a try. It's hands-down my favorite historical fiction of all time!

* I received this book from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review *

I want to start this off by saying that I am more disappointed than anyone that I couldn’t get through this. It has basically everything that I love in a book, dual POV’s from different time periods and a well thought out and well written historical story. I love historical fiction, and this was a story that I don’t often get to read. But the simple fact is, I just don’t care enough to keep struggling through this one. I somehow managed to get to the 50% mark, but I just can’t make myself read anymore. I know that I’m in the minority here, and I totally get why everyone loves this book, but it’s just got enough little things going on that unfortunately make it a miss for me.

The main thing that made reading this so difficult, and so drawn out for me, was one of the main characters. I do not care about the main character in the modern story, I do not even remember her name, and so being taken out of the gripping and tense story that’s taking place during the 1940’s and having to read about a character who I don’t like was just so awful. To me it made it feel like a completely different story, and not one that I liked. Which is so unfortunate because I loved the other POV and it’s such a heartbreaking story that I am curious to see how it ends, but I really really can’t make myself read it. I’ve tried so many times but I only manage to get a few sentences in and I give up. That last half of the book is a mountain that I simply have no desire to climb so I’m just done. Maybe one day I’ll buy this and give it another shot, but that’s not happening anytime soon.

I know this probably seems dumb, but I would still recommend this one. It’s got rave reviews and I get where those people are coming from, I just can’t get past my intense dislike of one storyline so here we are. If you like heartbreaking historical fiction though, then you’ll probably like this one? I don’t know, I feel bad because it’s not a bad book, far from it, it’s just not quite for me. (I gave it 3 stars because I only hated parts of it but the rest was good. Do people usually give ratings to DNF books? Who knows.)

A beautiful historical fiction novel set in two time periods, present day and WWII 1942. Alice is a struggling stay-at-home mother with her severely autistic son who attends to her dying grandmother's last wishes. Alina lives in a border town in Poland awaiting the return of her fiance, Tomasz, who was sent off to college in Warsaw.

This heartbreaking story had me gripped from page one - I was more intrigued by Alice's story however and would have read her story alone, based off of her struggles with her autistic son, her husband who is in denial of his sons diagnosis and their very intelligent young daughter. It was so raw that I needed to know how their marriage and relationship with each other would play out.

The story of of Alina and Tomasz came second for me. It may be because my reading list has been saturated with WWII novels that I felt the story was a bit of a stretch. I do not believe that Tomasz could have gotten away with hiding in the woods and attending to his friends for as long as he did - especially since the town was one of the first to be invaded and overran by the Nazi's. My understanding of history in this time period as well as many non-fiction novels read and time spent in Germany gives me the assumption that such a process would be very difficult and from that point on it was hard for me to believe in their story as much as I had wanted to. While the brutality and heartache found in between both stories was very real and heartbreaking, I would only give this novel 3.5 stars.

Thank you to Graydon House and NetGalley for this advanced reading copy!

A moving story of war, loss, family, sacrifice, heartbreak, and WWII. This book grabs you and doesn't let go. Written in a dual narrative split between the present day (granddaughter) and the past ('40's, grandmother). This is a remarkable and unforgettable read.

If you loved Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, Rimmer’s The Things We Cannot Say is a must-read. It begins in the Soviet Union in 1942, as the narrator marries Tomasz Slaski in a refugee camp – hardly the wedding she’d imagined to her childhood sweetheart. In present-day Florida, Alice deals with a meltdown from her son Eddie, who is on the autism spectrum and non-verbal. The meltdown makes her late in visiting her grandmother Hanna, who’s had a stroke that has left her non-verbal as well. In fact, the only way Alice’s “Babcia” can communicate is with Eddie’s Augmentative and Alternative Communication app. Frantic and seemingly aware that her time is short, Babcia is suddenly desperate for Alice to go to her native Poland and research people Alice has never heard of. Her grandfather, Tomasz, is on that list, which is confusing… Tomasz died of dementia a year ago. Why is he on the list? Click on the link below for the complete review.

The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer tells the story of two women. Alina lives in occupied Poland. Newly engaged, her family shelters her from the horrors of the war for as long as they can. But when it comes down to it, does she have the strength it will take to keep herself and her friend alive? Alice lives in present day America. Her Polish grandmother has had a stroke and so cannot communicate properly. But she gets out a message for Alice. Go to Poland. Tomasz. On her journey, Alice discovers the amazing lengths Alina went to in order to survive, simply based on all the things she couldn’t say.

I’ve said this before with war books. This is a book that needed to be written. I love that Rimmer used her family’s experience as a starting point for Alina’s story. But it wasn’t just a war story. Alice’s struggles are of a different sort, but still an important one to tell. With her son on the autistic spectrum, Alice has her own way of living that has no flexibility, but she learns what the human mind is able to do when given the opportunity. That’s a huge understatement and of course in no way meant to lessen the challenges that specific diagnosis can bring. But I think Alice handles it with grace.

At first I was a bit annoyed with Alina’s character. She seemed weak, and complained all the time about being treated as a child. But of course, there was so much strength in her. I think, after all, it was important to show her as a normal girl and not an extraordinary one. The war affected everyone, and the thing is that not everyone became a hero or had a heroic arc. Alina did, but in a much different way.

The description of how they wouldn’t talk about the war afterwards, not even speaking Polish at home is very much the story of my own grandparents. And I think the story in general. I understand why, but there are so many stories lost to time because of it. These are stories the younger generations need to hear. I hope there are enough. This is one of them, at least.

Overall, this is a wonderful story of survival, love, and familial sacrifice. It’s well worth the read, keeping in mind things may not be as it seems. And please remember to keep telling these stories. And keep reading them.