I read via audio, which is oddly calming if you hope to fall asleep. I like this book for personal reasons bc when I noticed it on NetGalley in fall 2022, that’s how my literary agent & I added Kensington to our list, & that’s where my book found a home. as for STAR CROSSED, it’s a tragic love story in Vichy France. it’s a story of individuals w/ historical details to substantiate. I appreciated the frequent contextual details re: Sartre & Beauvoir, though I’m still not quite sure why they’re mentioned so many times in this story, other than the location and that they produced ample historical evidence. overall, no complaints.

A well-researched and thoroughly heartbreaking story of WWII. Those looking for a happy ending are better off looking at the fiction of Sharon Cameron or Ruta Sepetys.

Bolstered by actual letters, the doomed love story of Annette and Jean was contentious from the beginning.
Jean was from a Catholic family and Annette was Jewish.
Torn from each other as France was engulfed in WWII, it wasn't hard to where Annette was sent.
I knew what the inevitable outcome would be but still I hoped.
A tender but sad romance set against the backdrop of WWII France and time was running out.
This one has lingered with me.

This piece of investigative journalism reads like a good novel. But even the best investigators cannot overcome the chaos of war, destroyed evidence, and the dehumanization of the Holocaust. So, only read this if you can live with the best guess of what happened.

Luckily, there are survivors to testify and to preserve letters and works of art that let the voices of those lost shine through. I have read a lot of works on the Holocaust and studied it relatively in depth, but still managed to learn things about occupied Paris and life in the camps. It also wonderfully shows why and how Jewish people "stayed," one of the recurring questions when people encounter the Holocaust. Also, the options for Jewish families as the nets tightened.

Overall, the Zelmans are lucky. Luck in war-torn countries isn't free, and Annette is with the movers and shakers. Her family is obviously well connected and supplied. So, don't expect this to be the average experience. It's more the best experience possible while staying. Even with more food than others, etc, etc. Ultimately, this protection from the worst is ultimately part of Annette's downfall. There is the feeling of the invincibility you feel in your late teens / early twenties across all of the pages.

Pick this one up if you like WWII, art history, surrealism, poetry, or biographies.

Soul crushing and heart breaking. I feel like this book should be taught in school alongside Romeo and Juliet as a real life example.

Star Crossed by Heather Dune Macadam and Simon Worrall is the story of Annette Zelman as told by her younger sister Michele. Michele wanted Annette's story to be told and read by others.

Annette Zelman was one of the older Zelman children. She took care of her younger siblings while her parents made clothes. As she got older, Annette wanted to have more freedom for being responsible for her siblings. This is when she met Jean Jausion. They fell in love and wanted to marry. She was a French Jew and he was a Catholic. After announcing their intend to marry, Annette was arrested. This is how she ended up at Auschwitz.

Jean set out to try and find Annette even though his father was the one who turned Annette over. Jean died trying to find Annette and Annette died at Auschwitz. Their love is what lead to their deaths.

Even though Star Crossed is about their love, the story is mostly about Annette Zelman.

Star Crossed, by Heather Dune Macadam & Simon Worrall is a true and well-researched book, using personal letters and writings, documentary evidence, and long personal interviews with the subject’s sister Michelle. The book starts almost frivolously with a mixture of Romeo and Juliet, combined with a soap opera, mingled with a bohemian art group in Paris in 1941. Youthful spats and jealousies are the order of the day, until life takes a turn with the German invasion.

New issues arise as feisty, strong-willed, artist teenager Annette Zelman and young Catholic poet Jean Jauson deal with the deep prejudices of both their families about the religious persuasion of the other. They find refuge at the Café de Flore, among names like Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Pablo Picasso. For a time, the Zelmans seem to have evaded many of the hunts for Jewish citizens, perhaps because of the father’s talented sewing that provides a perceived need in the community, but the time comes when they are no longer safe. The family escapes, but Annette stays behind with her plans for her wedding.

Historic arrests and deportations follow and Annette is betrayed. The rest of the book becomes as serious an account of what happened to her and her companions and of Jean’s search for her as it was frivolous in the beginning and gives an urgency to the reader to find resolution even while remembering the history that says this can’t come out well. It is a testament to courage produced by deep love that enables people to endure the unspeakable.

Kensington Books, Citadel and Net Galley furnished the advance reading copy for my review.

A true love story of star-crossed love in Nazi-Occupied Paris in the 1940s. The authors then moved us to the awful Holocaust chapter of the Nazis.

Apart from the descriptions of places and famous characters who frequented the local cafe, I did not enjoy the writing style and it took me ages to get into the book.

Thanks to Net Galley and Kensington Books for the chance to read and review.

Due to life circumstances, I am unable to review this book.

Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC.

Opinions are mine.

In this book we get a little perspective on how things were during this time. To a forbid love affair. We see the ins and outs of how these two managed to get some stolen time with each other.

Heartrending and compelling, “Star Crossed” is an important addition to the shared memories of courageous men and women who sought to live their lives freely and experience love during an unbearably dark moment in history. This is such an emotional read, and one I will long remember. I would shelve it next to my copy of “The Journal of Hélène Berr.” Annette and Hélène will both continue to inspire and touch countless readers, generations later. Their stories deserve to be told.

My gratitude to Kensington Books, Citadel and NetGalley for the chance to read an ARC of this book, so that I could write my honest review.

This is a non-fiction account of two star crossed lovers beginning in the 1930s and continuing thru WWII.
Anette is a young Jewish art student who attends the Académie des Beaux-Arts and frequents the Café de Flore, the in place to be for the surrealist artists and notables, the likes of Picasso, Giacometti, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean=Paul Sarte and more. Here she meets Jean, a catholic, who falls in love with her. They start out with the disadvantage of the families not supporting them and then the Nazis arrive and their relationship becomes illegal. Annette is arrested after the announcement of their upcoming wedding is published in a newspaper and taken to the camps. She is eventually moved to Auschwitz, losing contact with Jean along the way. Jean joins the resistance and begins searching for Annette only to die during his search, never to be reunited with his love.
This is a wonderfully written true love story set in the horrific time of occupied France. Completely captivating and heart-wrenching, I highly recommend to all WWII history buffs who like reading the individual stories of those who endured the Holocaust.
Thank you to Kensington Books and to Net Galley for the free ARC, I am leaving my honest review voluntarily.

Those looking for a history-heavy account alongside the topic of "star-crossed lovers" will enjoy this book. The book feels more like a documentary. There are chapters where an artistic movement and personalities are described in detail. Annette is a Jewish artist, Jean is a Catholic poet. This is a richly detailed account where historical events add to the tense drama of the couple's doomed relationship. This book actually led me to seek out the film L'Histoire d'Annette Zelman.

When I first started reading Star Crossed I thought I wouldn't like it because there was really no dialogue, or very little. I was prepared to put it down. But I read on and was captivated. The star family was the *Zelmans: Father, Maurice, mother Kaila, and children Annette, Guy, Charles, Michele and Cami, with Annette being the leading lady. This was a Jewish family in the Hitler infested Paris in the 1940s.

Annette was an artist, a student at art school. She was in love with Jean who was a gentile. They planned to be married. When the announcement came out in the paper, she was arrested because Jews were not allowed to marry gentiles according to Hitler's ruling. She was sent to a concentration camp, eventually Auschwitz. Her family and Jean hired a lawyer to plead her case and get her out. But it turned out that, although she took their money, the lawyer was in cahoots with the Germans. And it was also learned that Jean's father was the one who turned Annette in because he didn't want his son to marry a Jew.

The vast majority of the book was about Annette's experiences in the camp, which were atrocious! She was grossly overworked and starved. When she was first sent off, Jean was able to visit her and bring her care packages. But when she went to Auschwitz he lost track of her. Eventually he fought for the freedom fighters and decided to find her. It is not known how it happened but he ended up dying without ever learning where she was.

This story is told largely by Annette's sister, Michele. She out lived her parents and all of her siblings. Charles had many, many letters from Annette which his wife gave to Michele. Through them she was introduced to an Annette that she didn't know. And Guy had her artwork that he acquired after Jean died and he took over Jeans apartment. Annette and Jean had taken all of her work to his apartment for safe keeping

. This is a heart wrenching story of love, bravery and courage. While I wasn't at all pleased with outcome of the events, I feel fortunate to have come across the story of the life of Annette Zelman and all those who meant anything to her. The love she had for Jean was unparalleled. And although she had to sign an agreement that they would never marry, they still planned to spend the rest of their days together.

I would definitely recommend this book for book club. I gave it five stars.

This true story of star-crossed love in Nazi-Occupied Paris took me a while to connect with. I enjoyed reading 999- I learned so much- so I was immediately intrigued by the author's next foray into Holocaust history. The premise of two lovers, one Gentile and one Jewish, trying to survive in Nazi-Occupied Paris also intrigued me.

I struggled with the first quarter of the book. Too many new names, too much exposition on the surrealist movement in Paris, and not enough background about the two people at the heart of this book. However, once I got past part one, I was immediately much more interested.

The strength of a lot of the Holocaust histories being written now is the focus on individual stories. Bringing history to the level of one person is incredibly powerful. When Star Crossed does this, it does it well. Annette was a young artist, thoroughly enjoying her life in the artist circles in Paris. She falls in love with a young man in the same circle, Jean. But she is Jewish, and the Nazis had just held the fateful meeting at Wannsee that led to the Final Solution. Reading her story was terribly sad, especially as it was told using her letters and art preserved by her family. I won't reveal the ending of Annette and Jean's story, but if anyone wants to know before they go into the book, you can Google their names. If you feel brave enough to venture into the text without knowing the end, however, I highly recommend doing so. The story is much more impactful when you don't know how it ends (I, unfortunately, looked it up before reading and deeply regret it).

I liked the story but the writing was a little strange to me. I’m not sure I could pinpoint what it was. A weird use of tenses? Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the early read.

Star Crossed
by Heather Dine Macadam; Simon Worrall
Pub Date: August 22, 2023
Kensington
Thanks to the authors, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC of this book!
I was drawn to this book by the subject matter, cover and that it was historical fiction my favorite genre.
For readers of The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah who are hungry for a non-fiction account of Nazi-occupied Paris, Star Crossed is an epic true story of love and resistance during WWII from the award-winning author of 999. Part historical portrait of life during the Occupation, part valentine to The City of Light and the resilience of its people, this true love story follows the romance between the Romeo and Juliet of war-torn Paris – a Catholic Resistance fighter and a Holocaust victim who meet at the famous Café Flore before war, prejudice, and disapproving families set them on divergent and tragically inevitable paths.
I liked the book and will recommend it, although it was, at times more descriptive than necessary about trivial things. 4 stars

Paris in the 1930s was a temple of all cultural forms: music, art, literature, film. Unfortunately, as Nazis moved into occupy France, they dimmed the City of Light. Star Crossed is the story of a Jewish family, the Zelmans, as they intersect first with Paris and then with the Nazis. Annette, the eldest daughter babysits her younger siblings and attends art school at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. She also hangs out at Café de Flore and meets such notables as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sarte, Simone Signoret, Jean Jausion, Picasso, Giacometti, and Dora Maar. As the Nazi stranglehold on Paris tightens, very existence of Annette and her family is threatened.

The title of the book, Star Crossed: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler's Paris, seems a bit off. True, Annette is Jewish and her lover, the poet Jean Jauson, is Gentile, somewhat akin to Romeo and Juliet’s feuding families. However, the modern love story doesn’t begin until about halfway through the book, and the two lovers don’t die for each other as Romeo and Juliet did, but are individually done in the the war. The story is more a cultural history of Paris blended with a biography of Annette with a lot of cultural references, real events, photographs, drawings, and correspondence embedded. As such, the book covers a lot of ground and thus can't do justice to it all.

Although the book misses somewhat on the title, it does get one thing right: the atrocities committed by the Nazis in their efforts to rid the world of populations they deemed undesirable. Such books should be written—and read—so the world cannot escape the record of past genocides and hopefully will learn to rise above such destructive malevolent behavior.

Memories of tragic love in Nazi-occupied Paris, written with empathy for all the protagonists who wanted to live, love, and create during WWII

The narrator lovingly tells her about her interesting family and her older, almost adult sister, Annette, who is full of creativity and dreams for the future. When Annette, a Jew, falls in love with Jean, a Catholic, not only the Nazi regime stands against them but also their family.

In addition to personal history, the book also follows the social, cultural, and artistic history of Paris during the Second World War. Young Jewish women were seen as a little more exotic, independently minded, intelligent, and, as their admirers hoped, sexually liberated. Like a fata morgana, Paris was an oasis of art, music, culture, and books.

For young artists and writers, hungry for a sense of direction and place, the Cafe Flore was the perfect oasis in a country whose sense of identity had been shattered by occupying forces. But really, they were well-read, well-informed Parisians, and best of all, Germans avoided them.

Engaging read and a tribute to the family, love and peace.

3,5/5

I was intrigued with Star Crossed: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler's Paris. It was fascinating to read about this true story. Five stars.