historical-novel, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-setting, history-and-culture, romantic, danger, concentration-camp, love, WW2, grief, bullies, injustice, family-dynamics, friendship*****

This is a story centered on some very ordinary but special people in very horrible time and place. It is inspired by a true story and embodies the adage that Where there is life, there is hope. The publisher's blurb is a good hook and there is no need for recap or spoilers. This is a wonderful book!
I requested and received a free temporary ebook copy from Bookouture via NetGalley. Thank you!

The Watchmaker of Dachau is a beautiful tale based on a true story. It’s captivating and hopeful yet tragic and devastating. It hooks you from the very first page and makes for a great weekend read as putting it down is something you won’t be able to do.

Written from multiple points of view, we meet Isaac, an older man swept off the street and taken to Dachau concentration camp. Upon searching him, the guards find a small tool kit and learn that he is a watchmaker who can fix things. He is then plucked from the barracks and taken to the commandants home on the outskirts of the camp where he is put to work fixing things from a grandfathers clock to a toy train. He’s allowed to work in the garden workshop and quickly finds a diary of sorts hidden under the floor boards. Along with Anna, another prisoner brought to the house to wait on the commandant and his family, they read the diary, allowing them to remember what it feels like to be in love and have hope.

I love the multiple points of view of this story and how it’s a story within a story. The characters are beautiful written and the background descriptions paint a very vivid picture of a horrible place and time in the worlds history. I highly recommend this story but have your tissues ready.

Thanks to NetGalley and Carly Schabowski for early access to this compelling novel.

Very well written and atmospheric. I'm a big fan of WWII books and this one did not disappoint. I cared a lot about the characters.

Inspired by a true story, The Watchmaker of Dachau is gripping from the first page. It envelopes you with sorrow and despair, but also sheds lights of hope. As one would expect from a book about victims of concentration camps during WWII, painful emotions leap from the pages. Emotions that stayed with me, even after I finished the book.

The book takes place towards the end of WWII, in the concentration camp Dachau. When work duty was assigned, select prisoners in the camp were taken to local officers' homes for different types of work. Anna is selected to be a maid for Officer Becher, and Isaac, with his fine talent of fixing watches, is chosen to 'fix things' at the same house. Becher's son Friedrich (age 11) also arrives home from boarding school during this time.
I feel my words cannot do this book the justice it deserves. How can I, living in modern America in 2021, even begin to understand how Anna and Isaac, or the rest of the prisoners felt? I can't. I can't imagine living in a shack, on straw packed together for a mattress, only receiving one ladle of watered down soup for dinner and half of a piece of stale bread to be halved for my breakfast. I can't image not being able to see my family and also not knowing if I would ever see them again. I can't imagine living in such fear, wishing that death would consume me so I didn't have to feel the blows of the officers or the pains in my stomach from starvation. I can't and hopefully never will.

The book is told from different points of views. As a reader, it allows us to descend in to the minds of Anna and Isaac, the pain they feel and the sadness of being stripped from the lives they once lived. We also see the happenings through the innocent eyes of Friedrich, who doesn't understand why he is supposed to hate the kind man working on watches in his family's shed. Who also doesn't understand why there are children in the camp not far from his house, living in the harshest of conditions.

Carly Schabowski has done a magnificent job of writing a book that gives the audience a small glimpse into the devastation that occurred during WWII. I know this book will stay with me for a long time. As Isaac inscribed on the inside of his watch (remember me), I definitely will.

Brilliant, memorable and emotional. I have been on an emotional rollercoaster reading this. Issac is an amazing memorable character. Every part of the story is beautifully told and full of emotion. These incredible characters brought the pain, hunger and hopelessness of Dachau to life. In amongst all of the death and cruelty was a strength to survive. I will think of this book when I smell lemons.

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy.

I can imagine reading "The Watchmaker of Dachau" by Carly Schabowski for my book club. It has plenty of interesting plot lines and characters to warrant a decent discussion. Some of the material is pretty grim but that's the nature of a book set in a concentration camp.

It has echoes of "The Nightingale" by Kristin Hannah, so if you enjoyed that then you will enjoy this too.

Incredibly moving story of.an older man, the watchmaker, and his imprisonment at Dachau. His skills that enabled him to have a different job, the story of the hidden journal and the discovery of the owner. Isaac befriends Anna and Friedrich behind the keeper's back. His knowledge and skills that allowed him to gain small favors as well as the friends. m To never forget and to listen, hear and carry on the stories of that tragic horrific time is essential. Anna we discover her story of her family, her time in prison and how she befriends Nina. The story twists and intersects in when you least expect it.

Thank you to the publisher, Netgalley and the author for allowing me the privilege to read this story for an honest review. This one will stay with me for a long time. Thank you again.

Sad but beautifully told😢 Stellar🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

What a heartwrenching tale of the atrocities committed in the Nazi death camps. Principal characters Anna and Isaak fight daily against starvation, the cold and the whims of their cruel Nazi captors in the final months of WWII. Their struggle and their backstory from before their imprisonment is a page-turner, and the romantic writings by a fellow prisoner that they discover in a hidden corner of a shed are sublime. There's even a serendipitous twist to the end that I never saw coming.

I love a well-written historical novel that immerses me in the time, lives and emotions of the characters. Carly Schabowski's story of love, loss and sacrifice under brutal conditions is a fascinating rendering of the camps. It's sad, eminently memorable and a thoroughly worthwhile read.

Thanks to publishers Bookouture and NetGalley for providing a complimentary advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest review.

A heartbreaking story about the lives of those affected in WWII. The pain of being imprisoned and treated as unworthy, less than nothing. Having to read about the women prisoners carrying out the bodies of other women in the camp, those that had died from typhus or just plain malnutrition, was absolutely heartbreaking. I hate to believe that horror existed. Yet it did.

The Watchmaker Of Dachau focuses around Isaac and Anna. Prisoners of the Jewish camps. Each day they are retrieved from their prison camp and taken to work for the Bechers. They are not to be seen nor heard throughout the day by the Bechers. At the end of the day, they must return to the horrors of the prison camp,

The book had me hooked from the first page. This was my first book written by Carly Schabowski but I did enjoy her style of writing. I will read more of her books and I will recommend The Watchmaker of Dachau. Thank you to the publishers for providing me with ARC copy for my unbiased opinion.

The Watchmaker of Dachau by Carly Schabowski is an emotional World War II novel with multiple points of view.

During January 1945, Isaac, a Jewish watchmaker, was captured and sent to Dachau. Since Isaac brings tools with him, he is chosen to work at Strurmbannfuhrer (Senior Officer) Becher’s house fixing anything that is broken. Anne is a maid for the Bechers. Friedrich is the Becher’s son that just returned from school and is missing his friends. All three are dealing with loneliness. Isaac and Anne are dealing with the daily struggles of Dachau and Friedrich is dealing with parents that don’t care about him. The three of them become friends in this great story told from all of their perspectives.

I really enjoyed The Watchmaker of Dachau. This story is heartbreaking and hard to read at points, but this book is a great read. The Watchmaker of Dachau grabbed my attention from the first page. There were some parts that were so horrifying I had to take a break from reading. The worst part is that what is described in this story actually happened. One of my favorite parts of this book is the characters. All of the characters are hardworking and compassionate. The three main characters become friends. I liked that the story was told from the different viewpoints of the characters especially since they had vastly different experiences. Having the story told from two prisoners and the child of a Nazi was very interesting.

I recommend The Watchmaker of Dachau for historical fiction fans especially fans of World War II novels.

Thank you Bookouture and NetGalley for The Watchmaker of Dachau.

This was a good WWII story. My one and only criticism would be that there seemed to be some hard to get to coincidence.

I loved Isaac! I will forever think of all the Isaac's, Anna's, Levi's, etc...whenever I smell a lemon.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for this advanced readers copy. This book is due to release January 20, 2021.

Great book i thoroughly enjoyed the story of Anna and Isaac , amd i look forward to reading more by this Author

I did fi d tbe writing very nice and beautiful but I had trou le getting into the story. While I do love the idea of historical fiction this just wasn't for me

This is the only book I have ever chosen to read about life in a Nazi concentration camp, my reasoning for avoidance previously being that I would find the graphic content so harrowing that it would leave an indelible imprint in my head. I ignored my gut instinct and decided to give The Watchmaker of Dachau a read and am now able to write what I hope will assist people who like me who are suffering the same dilemma to read or not to read.
Isaac Schuler has evaded capture by the Nazis for most of the war but finds himself bereft of most of his belongings on a rail journey herded like cattle aboard wagons to a lesser known concentration camp in Dachau.
On arrival the guards discover he has transported a small set of watch repair tools which lead them to putting him to work at the home of senior officer Becher alongside the camp.
Conditions in the camp are based on true accounts and yes, they are harrowing, and made me sob, but they also helped me to see the courage, friendship and compassion that can survive in such dark times.
Anna is a young Jewish girl held at the camp who also finds herself ordered to provide maid services to the Becher family and both she and Isaac develop a deep bond of friendship as they are transported by guards and spend precious snatched minutes together in the rickety shed where Isaac is left to work on repairing the stolen items snatched from the dead Jewish inmates.
In the midst of this arrives 11 year old Freidrich Becher who is the only son of the Becher couple. Freidrich is an unexpected delight, so at odds with his egocentric vile parents. Left to his own devices he begins to befriend Isaac and Anna and discovers the true purpose of the camp and whilst he is sheltered from the extent of the atrocities which are happening on his doorstep by Isaac upholding the worst of the information, he begins to show that he has a sense of compassion for others, regardless of the Nazi regime.
There is a beautiful passage where he plays music and encourages Isaac and Anna to dance because he knows this will bring joy. I
Another story is also woven in alongside as Isaac unearths a pile of letters under the floor of the shed and he slowly uncovers this as he reads with Anna.
The closing chapters are very sad and moving and you will need a box of tissues but there remains some light in the final pages.
I am so pleased I manned up and read this book. I will never forget this book. it leaves you feeling eternally grateful to all those who sacrificed so much to bring to an end the terrible suffering and loss of life inside these camps.
Thank you so much to Carly Schabowski, Bookouture and Netgalley for allowing me to review this proofcopy.

4.5 Stars

The Watchmaker of Dachau is yet another story that deals with the horrors of WW II. The main story is set during 1945, the last few months, where people who could escape for years got captured and tortured. Many more lost lives while some continued to hope and survive, waiting to be rescued.
The prologue and epilogue are set in 1996, Cornwall, England. The past is divided into three POVs (though all are written in the third person). Issac, the watchmaker, Anna, the maid, and Friedrich, the son of Senior Officer Becher and his bratty wife, are the major three people who offer us viewpoints. We see another POV, one that is filled with love, pain, confusion, memories, and philosophy.
Characters like Greta, Jan, Nina, Elijah, Levi, and others add to the story. We see many thoughts and reactions from the characters, all of which seem as real as they can get. It is evident that the author did her research very well. She and her editor also made sure not to dump their research into the book.
The focus was on bringing the characters to life and making them appear human rather than using them as mere tools to share historical details. For me, that’s what made the book so effective. I love how Friedrich’s character was used throughout the book. It’s one of the highlights of the story.
The writing is both descriptive and concise. It’s not fast-paced but is not too slow to make the reader lose interest.
Right from the prologue, we see hints provided to the reader about what’s to come. This is no crime fiction, but it’s seemed like the author’s way of preparing the reader and allowing them to make their own conclusions. It is clever writing.
I was disappointed by the ending (not for what it is was, but well, I wished it to be a wee bit different). I don’t want to say more and reveal anything. That said, I did have an inkling that it would be on similar lines (ref: hints).
Overall, this is a sad yet beautiful book about love, hope, and rebuilding a new life after surviving the worst nightmare.

Thank you, NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC.

Thank you NetGalley, Carly Schabowski and Bookouture for the ARC of The Watchmaker of Dachau.
This is my personal review.
This is an historical fiction book based on real life events. It tells the story of many who are imprisoned in the Dachau camp. It is heartbreaking and yet tells the story of what happens during this time in history. The friendships that are formed and help in ways to ease the lives they are all living. It is a book that will stay in the mind of the readers long after the last word is read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I know there’s a lot of historical fiction written about WWII but this is one of the good ones. Picking up near the end of the war and taking place mostly in Dachau, this is the story of two prisoners and the son of one of the senior officers.

Friedrich Becher is the young son of Senior Officer Becher. Pulled from boarding school to stay with his parents within walking distance of the concentration camp, he has no idea the atrocities happening only a stone’s throw away and elsewhere during the war. He is left alone to entertain himself most of the time as his parents become more frantic and stressed without any explanation.

Anna helps to take care of the Becher’s home. She is escorted from the camp to her work and back every day. She has lost her fiancé, her brother, and her mother, and she spends her days trying to avoid the eye of Senior Officer Becher and the anger of his increasingly unstable wife.

Isaac has managed to stay hidden for so long, it’s a surprise when he’s ambushed and brought to Dachau. The tools he is carrying reveal his skills to the guards and he is brought to the Becher’s to repair a grandfather clock. Once successful, he is kept on to repair watches taken from prisoners to be given as gifts and rewards to soldiers.

Isaac and Anna strike up a friendship on snatched conversations and small meals provided by the empathetic housekeeper. Friedrich, desperate for company, overcomes his fear caused by the Jewish propaganda to get to know Isaac and Anna while they work in his home and disappear each night to return to what he believes is a village of people like them.

Every day is a fight, a struggle to survive, and with increasingly rampant rumours about Americans coming to the rescue, the officers in the camp are becoming more cruel and frantic by the day.

A beautifully told story, the horrors of Dachau and the war are unflinchingly written in contrast and simultaneous to the love and friendship that continues to grow and thrive despite the inhumanities. Carly Schabowski writes complex characters and emotions effortlessly, making this an enjoyable read despite the content matter. For anyone else with an affinity for historical fiction, I’d recommend this well-written take on a familiar story.

Isaac, an old Jewish watchmaker, gets picked up on his way home and taken to Dachau. His ability to “fix anything” gets him put to work for the Senior Office Becker and his family, at their house a walk away from the workcamp. It’s starts off with fixing a grandfather clock and then Becker keeps finding things for him to fix, typewriters and watches and jewelry taken from those entering the camp. The book tells the story of the relationships that are being formed, their background stories and who they are now. Anna, also from the camp, works as a maid at the Becker household and becomes Isaac’s friend. Nina, Anna’s friend at the camp, Friedrich (the Becker’s 11-year-old son) who comes home from school to a loveless family and befriends Isaac and Anna, Levi, and more. Woven throughout the book is a stack of letters found in the shack where Isaac works, which ties in with the feelings of characters.
I hesitated to read this book as I wanted to be emotionally ready for reading about Dachau, but I am glad I read it, it gives a different dimension than I have read before, it still touches on the atrocities and doesn’t make light of it.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the privilege of reading this book early.

Thank You Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC! This review is based on my honest opinion.

Based on true events and set during the Holocaust and WWII, the story tells about a man named Isaac who arrives to Dachau Concentration Camp. The camp leader, Herr Berscher realizes that Isaac is a watchmaker and asks Isaac to repair the grandfather clock which was gifted by the Fuhrer and which no one was able to repair. Isaac managed to repair the clock impressing Berscher thus he starts giving more items for Isaac to repair by giving him a garden shed as his workshop, away from the atrocious working conditions at the camp. In the same house, Isaac befriends Anna, who is also the prisoner at the camp working in the kitchen at Berscher's house, Greta, a friendly German who feeds Isaac and Anna. Levi, the gardener and Friedrich who is the young son of Herr and Frau Berscher who befriends both Isaac and Anna. Isaac then comes across bundles of letters written by someone named J.A.L who used to be the gardener at the Berscher household.

As like most Holocaust books, this story was emotional and sad at the same time. The fact that these events happened in real life was too much to bear to read--the atrocities at the camp, the hunger and starvation, the brutal conditions at the camp was too horrifying but one should never forget that these things happened in real life. The author has done so much research that she has made the book as realistic as possible. The ending was sad and the author did a good job, drawing the reader into the story. I also like how the author balanced out the characters--the good Germans like Greta who tried to feed Anna and Isaac as much as she can and Friedrich who doesn't care to develop friendship with the Jews, since most of the Holocaust books are only one sided. As such, many of the characters in the book are likable. Some of the parts in the story was too emotional to read and at times, particularly towards the end, I cried at some parts...

Overall, this is an emotional book to read, unputdownable and that will make you cry till the end and you didn't want to miss this story about friendship and courage at the will to survive the horrid conditions. Worth five stars!

Many thanks to Carly Schabowski, Bookouture and #NetGalley for allowing me to read an advance reader copy of The Watchmaker of Dachau. The opinions expressed are my own.

Kudo’s to the author and publishers for choosing an incredibly evocative cover for this novel. The more I read, the more I realize that if the cover doesn’t appeal to me, I may never read the book. This cover drew my attention and led me to request an advance readers copy of the book for review.

I have read numerous books that tell stories of events that took place during the Second World War and stories that tell of the horrors of the Holocaust. I believe these books are an important reminder to society that we need to learn from them and make sure such events never happen again. Many such books focus on the most famous concentration camp – Auschwitz, but this one told a story set in lesser known Dachau. It was inspired by true events but the tale itself is fictional. Although the book begins and ends in present times, most of the story is set in the past and brings the time alive to those of us fortunate enough not to have lived there personally. What makes the story even sadder for me is that most of the events happened when the war was clearly on its way to an end. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like for those who managed to avoid the Nazi’s reach throughout most of the war only to be captured and imprisoned in it’s final months.

Isaac, was a well known watchmaker as was his father before him. A widower, he lived in a small town and managed to avoid the notice of the Germans until 1945 when he was captured and sent to Dachau. He had no time to go home and pack a suitcase. He was simply pulled off the streets and all he had at hand were the tools he used with his watches. Surprisingly, these tools kept him from immediate death and led to a job working at the home of Sturmbannfuhrer Becher. He was called on to fix just about anything that was broken. It didn’t matter if it was a watch or a car. As long as he could fix it his life seemed safe, if not pleasant. He was always hungry and even though it was winter he worked in a shed that offered little protection from the weather. When he returned to the main camp, other prisoners sometimes resented the “ease” of his job.

Anna Reznick is another inmate of Dachau who has been chosen to work at the home of Becher. Her job is as a maid, and although the housekeeper befriends her and does her best to provide extra food, Anna lives in terror of the ire of Becher’s vapid wife Liesl. She knows that she must remain useful in order to keep her job which helps keep her alive and also allows her to bring food back to Dachau to share with her friend Nina.

As the war situation has become more dire, Becher’s son Friedrich has been ordered home from boarding school, but neither parents is really pleased to see him or willing to pay him much attention. He has no idea what is going on at Dachau or what his father does and has not been molded into an upholder of Nazi ideology. His interactions with Isaac and Anna are kinder but very dangerous if his parents become aware of them.

These characters among others are the main focus of this story. While Isaac is working in his shed he finds a batch of letters hidden under some floorboards. He doesn’t know who wrote them but as he gradually reads them, they begin to offer hope as they tell of love in a place of darkness. The writer shares a sentiment that has been expressed by Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor who wrote in his book A Man’s Search For Meaning, that no matter what the Germans did to him, they could never take away his power to choose how he would respond or what his attitude could be. That book had a powerful impact on my life from the time I read it as a teenager and this resonated with me once again as similar sentiments were expressed by the anonymous writer. Shabowski manages to tie these hidden papers into the fabric of the book in a very special way.

This book is not an easy read in the sense that everything ends with a happy ever after. It does cover some of the horror of life in a concentration camp (although not to the depth I have seen in various other stories) but the focus is more on the relationships between the characters and the impact that simple actions can have on their lives. It moved me deeply and I would definitely recommend it to others.