Recent current events inspired me to pick up this book again and that was when I realized, I hadn’t shared my thoughts yet. I have posted on my social media, share a title from the Jewish Book Awards list in an effort to encourage all to share not only support, but a book which can inspire greater awareness and education which can lead to change. The Last Train to London is a title high on my list which accomplishes this very thing. The story reminds us there is “hope in the darkness” not just during Hitler’s time but in these days as well. Highly recommend.

Another historical fiction book hit out of the park by Clayton! This one reminded me in many aspects of Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. Clayton's strong and vivid writing style lays out the story beautifully before you. Highly recommend!

WWII stories are always pull on my heartstrings. The devistation, the strength and the courage shown by and to the characters is always so emotional. When a WWII book is focused on chrildren it makes it all the more chilling and moving. I loved the bravery shown by adults for the orphaned/abandoned children in helping them reach safety. It was a very well written novel.

The stakes are high and this book keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end. Well written with well-crafted characters makes this a must read.

Synopsis:
In 1936, the Nazi are little more than loud, brutish bores to fifteen-year old Stephan Neuman, the son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family and budding playwright whose playground extends from Vienna’s streets to its intricate underground tunnels. Stephan’s best friend and companion is the brilliant Žofie-Helene, a Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. But the two adolescents’ carefree innocence is shattered when the Nazis’ take control.

Once again this is a novel that highlights some of the more obscure facts that happened during the worst war in history. Last Train to London written by Meg Waite Clayton tells the story of the Kinder transport.

In this novel Clayton tells the story of Geertruida Wijsmuller, known as “Tante Truus” who is part of the Dutch resistance. She helps children to escape out of Nazi controlled areas to places that will take them. She has been taking chances as she works to rescue many children as we meet her at the beginning of the book. She then is willing to risk everything when the chance to save hundreds of children becomes available. She approaches Adolf Eichmann after hearing that Britain is willing to accept children coming in by train to London. they will then place them with families across the country. Eichmann gives her a number and time limit and Truus races against the clock to get her train on the way to London in time.

Two other stories are starting at different locations heading toward the same train station to hopefully meet up with the Kindertransport. Can they meet there in time and will there be room for them on the train car? Stephan Newman, a 17 year old Jewish youth and his young brother are left alone together when their parents are taken in a raid. He has grown up in an influential and wealthy family in Vienna and as a young budding playwright feels only anger toward the changing situation in Europe.

Žofie-Helene, is the brilliant teen Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. She is a math prodigy and friends with Stephan. She tries to help Stephan using her math skills and ability to negotiate the tunnels under the city as the Nazis close in.

Using factual information about Geertruida Wijsmuller, who was married to a Dutch banker, who supported her work along the way this novel fleshes out her personal story. She was childless herself experiencing many miscarriages. But through her own personal loss she continued to rescue children and sending them from the Baltics and Poland across borders to Palestine via Marseilles.

In 1936, the Nazi are little more than loud, brutish bores to fifteen-year old Stephan Neuman, the son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family and budding playwright whose playground extends from Vienna’s streets to its intricate underground tunnels. Stephan’s best friend and companion is the brilliant Žofie-Helene, a Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. But the two adolescents’ carefree innocence is shattered when the Nazis’ take control.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thank you to Harper and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review!

Trigger warnings: Miscarriage, suicide, murder, death of a baby.

This took me a minute to read due to a reading slump, but I'm happy I took my time to read every single word. This book will not let you down, I promise!

It takes place from 1936-1940 (with an epilogue), and it's told in third-person omniscient (my favorite point of view in novels). It's historical fiction too, so it basically checks off all of the boxes that I need to rate a book five stars.

This may seem cliché but Geertruida "Tante Truus" Wijsmuller was my favorite character, if not an all-time favorite character! She is married to a man who loves her deeply, but it almost seems like he just wants to have a baby with her. She's a Dutchwoman who sneaks children out of Nazi Germany and takes them to countries that will accept them with open arms. She is told to take six-hundred children (toddlers-17 y/o) to England on Sabbath. She's determined, strong, and accepting. She treats every child like individuals rather than the numbers that are on their clothing.

Stephen Neuman is a 15-year-old Jewish boy who lives in Austria. His father runs a chocolate store and they are quite wealthy. Stephen wants to become a playwright one day, his idol being a man named Stefan Zweig. The downside is that his mother is ill. She can't do many things on her own.
Stephen ends up having a crush on Zofie-Helene, a girl whose mother is the editor of Vienna Independent. The death of her father was claimed to be from suicide in a Berlin hotel in 1934. Which is quite an unlikely story. Zofie is also a math prodigy, always throwing numbers around.

I enjoyed Zofie and Stephan's parts in the novel. I wanted to know how they connected to Truus, and it becomes very clear later in the novel, but I won't spoil it for you. I just didn't find their story super intriguing. Obviously, it was wonderful enough to give five-stars. I think I enjoyed the fact that it was pre-WWII, which I don't read often. I didn't know there were people dedicated to transferring children to safety.

I highly recommend this book if you love historical fiction! It's definitely one I will soon put on my shelves.

Tante Truss a woman of faith strength bravery a book of her heroism saving little children from Hitlers torture.This is a moving book based on a true story.Heart wrenching a book I could not put down and will not forget.I will be sharing with friends.#netgalley #st.martins

The Last Train to London, by Meg Waite Clayton, is an interesting book about the Kindertransports. The story begins slowly (I almost set it aside), but after about 100 pages, it picks up and then I could not put it down. This time in history is frequently written about, but this one is a bit different. The Kindertransports were for moving the children away from harm to keep them safely tucked away during the war. This story is both informative and heart wrenching. Not a light read.

Excellent story about the Kindertransports, a system of getting children out of Nazi-occupied Europe before and during WWII. Innocent children, Stephan and Žofie-Helene are enjoying a simple, safe life in Vienna before the arrival of Hitler's army. Then everything changes. Stephan is Jewish so he is immediately at risk. Žofie-Helene's mother is a writer for an anti-Nazi newspaper so she, too, is in danger. Their only hope is to get out of the country and find safe haven in another country. But how, as children, can they manage that? This is a very detailed, very intense story. Lots of history, but go slowly in the beginning so as not to miss important info.

The history involved in this type of novel needs to be brought out on a regular basis so that future readers never forget the horror of the times. This was a new side step into the times...something I had not heard of before but was thrilled to learn of. The writing was heart felt and thought provoking!

There are so many stories to tell of WWII. Those of silent heroes, lives lost, and survivors.  The Last Train to London is part of my WWII historical fiction journey and I'm always astounded by how much I continue to learn about this terrible time in history. But then I'm grateful that there are these stories to tell and that there were brave people trying to do what was right when so much was against them. 

Meg Waite Clayton tells a somewhat fictional story about the Kindertransport that saved so many children from the Nazi between 1938-1940. I say somewhat fictional because the book is based on a real effort and woman, Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer, who helped bring many children to safety transporting them by train to London. Without her, and the countless others that helped, who knows what would have happened to those children. More than likely they would not have survived. 

The author told this story from several perspectives, Geetrudia (aka Tante Truus), Stephan Neuman, Zofie-Helene, and occasionally relatives of Stephan or Zofie. I believe it was a good mixture of perspectives. It enabled details of how it was for Jewish children, non-Jewish families, and those outside of Nazi invasion trying to help save as many lives as they could. 

Vienna: Stephen is a teenage boy of a wealthy jewish family whose made their fortunate with their chocolate business. He lives with his family in an affluent home with his younger brother (Walter), father, and very ill mother. Zofie-Helene is a teenage girl whose a brilliant aspiring mathematician. She lives with her grandfather, younger sister, and mother who writes for an anti-Nazi newspaper. 

Amsterdam: Truus is unable to have children of her own, but feels that because of this, it is her duty to save as many children she can. So she risks her life countless times for children she doesn't know. To do this she must face and somewhat manipulate Nazi soldiers along the way. 

Truus's story is new to me and, by reading this book, I feel that I've kept her memory alive somehow. I would have liked more of the book to be about her journey and what she had to do to save the amount of children she did. But of what there was, I can tell that she was an extremely brave woman. Someone to be admired. 

Stephen and Zofie's journeys were very tough and I think Meg was able to capture what it would have been like for them. For Stephen to lose everything and Zofie risking her life for those she loved. I do feel that it needed more detail to give it that one last emotional punch it needed. I really only cried at the very end when Walter (Stephan's younger brother) was being taken away by his adopted family. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the book and thought the characters were wonderfully written. I believe Meg did justice to Truus's story even though I wanted more of it. I would highly recommend this book to those that read historical fiction.

I really wanted to give this book 5 stars but due to the fact that it took close to being 150 pages before I felt like I could not put it down, I have to give it only 4 stars.

There are a few dry chapters as they read like a history book but they are necessary to get the background of how the Kindertransport started in Austria. There are a lot of characters to keep track of in the beginning and at times I had to stop and think who and what their importance was to the story.

I will say, once I got around 150 pages I did not want to put the book down. I found the ending heartbreaking but I do understand that that time is history was full of heartbreak.

The Last Train to London is a worthy read for those readers who love to read about World War 2.

I received a complimentary copy from the publisher, HarperCollins, through NetGalley. Any and all opinions expressed in the above review are entirely my own.

This book wasn't as good as author's previous books, and not as good as other books set during this time. That said, it was just ok. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher!

This one took me a little bit of time to get into, because there were short chapters from multiple POVs and I had to orient myself around who was who, what they were doing, and where they fit into the story - but I'm so glad I didn't give up because this book was AMAZING.

I have read a few books about the Kindertransport program in Europe, but this stands out as the best among those that I've read. The research that went into the story was incredible and evident on almost every page, and I was absolutely fascinated by Tante Truus, the real woman out of the Netherlands that helped save more than 10,000 children during World War II.

I can't recommend this book highly enough, truly. It's well worth the read even if you've read many other WWII Hist Fic books - but especially so if you've never read any centered on the Kindertransport programs before.

I really enjoyed reading this book and finished it in one day I highly recommend for historical fiction lovers

I remember reading the reviews for this book on Netgalley, so many readers at the time didn’t much care for it that it pushed the book way toward the bottom of my reading list, but then again my interest in historical dramas and WWII eventually won over and I did end up reading it. And having read it, it is now blatantly obvious where the negative and not so flattering reviews came from. This is definitely the kind of book where the actual plot and the execution vary dramatically. So let’s talk about that. The plot…well, you can’t really go wrong there. Ever since Schindler’s List paved the way, a story of ordinary people displaying extraordinary reserves of courage to defy evil and save lives…that’s epic. The greater the evil, the narrower the odds, the more dramatic it all is. And nothing quite represents evil as a war, especially a war like WWII. And so this is a story of an ordinary Dutch woman named Truus Wijmuller saved a significant number of Jewish children and ushered them mostly to the (relative) safety of England. The mission as dangerous as it sounds, especially after the annexation of Austria. A situation made perilous and close to impossible by evil mastermind behind the Final Solution, someone Truus ends up dealing with directly. So thematically this is story gold, classic tale of heroic deeds, lives saved, etc. The author has obviously done her research, the book has the vivid detailed quality one might associate with the finer historical fiction. But stylistically is where the story falters. In the other reviews I’ve read many readers stated that there were too many characters to juggle. That wasn’t really a thing for me and eventually all these separate plot strings do tie together into a cohesive quilt. But the way the separate narratives were handled wasn’t optimal. The entire novel comprises short chapters of differing perspectives, something more suited to a mystery thriller than a serious drama. And as a result the book is choppy. There is a certain abrupt quality that never really goes away. For all the great characters the novel features, it’s difficult to form an emotional attachment at times because of this choppiness. In musical language, the notes should have been allowed to ring out instead of the staccato delivery. And subsequently the ending comes across somewhat unsatisfactory also. Just when you’re finally invested with the characters, you don’t get to find out what life holds for them. After all, making it to England just as England was entering the war wasn’t exactly a guarantee of safety and security, just a dramatic improvement of the odds. It would have been nice to have an epilogue, the sort that covers the lives of everyone, brief summaries or something. There is something of a sort for the real life Truus and children she saved in the afterword, but in fictionalized world, not so much. In fact, it would be nice to know more about Truus’s life too. Actually, now thinking about it, this would have been something interesting to read about in a work of nonfiction or maybe watch in a biographical program. After all, this was already an extraordinary person who’s done extraordinary things, it can do with more facts, but it doesn’t need fictionalization, especially not a very well done one. The writing itself is perfectly decent, of a variety I normally associate with women’s fiction, not quite emotionally exploitative, but within shouting distance from it. And, inexplicably, everyone has elliptical laughs. Everyone. So yeah, a very long novel that quickly enough due to its short chapter structure, but wasn’t an especially satisfying reading experience. Great story, obviously. Terrific story. The sort of story that might go a long way to improve one’s opinion of people…or do the exact opposite (it is WWII, after all) , depending on your personal outlook. But as a book it’s pretty average. Thanks Netgalley.

This book is based on a true story and though it is a compelling story to tell, the way the book was set up made it difficult to follow and get to know and really feel for the characters. While it was interesting, there are others out there that are much more engaging.

I expected a lot after reading the Amazon blurb for this book: “a pre-World War II-era story with the emotional resonance of “Orphan Train” and “All the Light We Cannot See,” centering on the Kindertransports. Those are two of my favorite novels in recent years.

This novel covers 1936 to 1940 as Truus Wijsmuller and her efforts to smuggle Jewish children out of Nazi Germany. The story is told through two viewpoints and short chapters. Truus and fifteen-year-old Stephan Neuman.

All Stephan want to do is write plays, go to the theater and hang out with his new Zofie-Helene, a Christian girl he meets through his barber. Zofie is a math prodigy. I didn’t understand what she was saying half of the time, and I think contributed to my unfavorable reponse to the story.

As the story opens, Stephan and Zofie live in Vienna, a city on the edge with the imminent threat of a Nazi invasion. The wander through the city, mostly through a complex cave system, popping up here and there, that seemed a tad ludacrious to me.

Truus, a member of the Dutch resistance, begins to smuggle children out of Germany, making more and more trips into the occupied country. Maybe this is my twenty-first century perspective talking, but I found that the way she instructed all the children to call her Tante Truus (Aunt Truus) creepy. I understand that it was necessary given the unforeseeable encouters they would have, but it made me extremely uneasy. Also, I found her sections lacking tension; she never seemed to be in real danger, even when she was escorting thirty children across the border. And that is my biggest complaint of this novel---lack of tension. Never did I feel thatStephan, his five-year-old brother Walter, Zofie, Truus or the children were in life-or-death situations.

Because of the short chapters, I never felt a real connection to any of the characters. The most positive aspect of ready this lengthy novel is that the name Truus Wijsmuller may now be recognized for the great work that she did. Truus is credited with saving over 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazi horrors.

Due to its lack of tension and the inability to make me connect with the characters, “The Last Train to London” receives 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.