3.5 stars!

This was a fascinating story that follows a girl from a small Polish village with dreams of being the first female physician in Poland.

When things don’t go according to her dream, eventually leading to the WWII, the story moves from living in England to her life now as an old woman.

The narration was wonderful, and I highly recommend!

*many thanks to Little Brown Co and Netgalley for the gifted copy for review

The Snow Hare opens in Wales with an aged Lena on her deathbed. Memories of her past in Poland float into her mind and feel all too real. As she revisits her hopes and reams, her marriage, trauma, and motherhood, Lena faces her choices while her family members come and go.

This was a solid four stars for me with heartfelt emotion and more information about the Soviet invasion of Poland than I had previously known. Lena is a strong character that I became more and more invested in.

Rose Ackroyd is a talented narrator. Her voice fit Lena’s character perfectly, however, it is always clear when other characters are speaking. Her pacing and intonation are excellent. I will definitely be recommending this audiobook to my book club members and friends who enjoy historical fiction.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.

The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz has touched me to my core. What a heartbreakingly beautiful story about one girl’s hopes and dreams that are shattered after a tragic accident. To be honest, I needed a few days to process The Snow Hare after finishing it before I could write my review. It was so emotionally heavy but moving and inspiring at the same time.

I found the beginning of the story a bit confusing and a bit slow. But I’m so glad I persevered and read on. As once I established what was going on, it all made sense. The Snow Hare while fiction was based on the life of the authors grandmother during pre and post World War II in Poland, Siberia, Wales and England.

The Snow Hare is told from the point of view of Magdalena (Lena). While Lena lays on her death bed in England, she relives memories of her childhood and young adulthood in Poland. Lena had always wanted to be a doctor from the time she was little. She had even been guaranteed a spot at the University in Warsaw but all her hopes and dreams came crashing down when she suffered a terrible accident. What happens next is an unwanted and loveless marriage, the birth of a daughter and then being sent by the Russians to a labor camp in Siberia. Lena’s life is incredibly sad. She experiences heart break upon heart break. She looses her loved ones due to disease and malnutrition and terrible living conditions in the camps. It honestly is so inspiring how Lena continues on. Only the love for her baby daughter and her fierce desire to protect her and keep her alive keeps her going.

Such a beautiful yet tragic story. Although sad, the Snow Hare is interspersed with moments of pure love and snippets of genuine happiness. I will continue thinking about this story for years to come. Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for my advance audio copy and to Little, Brown and Company for my eGalley of The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz. She is a brilliant story teller.

Beautifully written, a powerful main character that I both hated and loved. Excellent conversation on true love, true callings and the power of motherhood and family. I enjoyed the tie into WWII but that setting was not the main focus of this story.

Trigger warnings for rape, family death.

I lived this book. I didn't really know what to expect from it, but once I started it I couldn't stop.

The audiobook especially is beautifully done and I was fully engrossed in Lena's head and her pain and her loves. I gave this 4.5 stars, a star for every time I cried.

Pros: the relationships (both good and bad) were the heart of this story and were so well written, the setting was superbly rendered and I felt everything along with Lena, the writing style and voice of this book is a true delight

Cons: my only issue was pacing, the beginning felt very slow and the ending rushed a little in comparison

I will definitely be thinking about this story for a long time. If you liked a read like Atonement where the ending is brutal but beautiful, then this is a book you must pick up.

Lena lies on her deathbed and as she slips in and out of consciousness memories resurface. Memories of her childhood in Poland, memories of the early days of her marriage, memories of the day that changed the course of her life, and memories of a love found in the snowy tundra of Siberia.

I have always been fascinated with Eastern Europe during the Cold War. I can remember the Berlin Wall coming down and there was little in the way of information about what had been going on in those countries behind the Iron Curtain. So I was interested in Snow Hare as it was set in Poland during the Soviet occupation. When I started the novel I thought it was at the end of WWII as I didn't realize that the Soviets had invaded Poland in 1939. All the history I knew of the 1939 invasion of Poland was done by Germany.

The story is told in flashbacks and, as I was listening to the audiobook, I would have liked some indication that we had shifted to the past or the present. I was often momentarily confused. Lena is on her deathbed and is confused too as she slips into the past or awakes from these dreams in the present. Perhaps in the print edition, these shifts are delineated by chapters (chapters are never mentioned in the audiobook) or some kind of visual section break. As it also as took me quite some time to realize that the past was before the war and not after the war, I wish there had been mention of years.

(For those who like me didn't know about this piece of history, the Soviet Union occupied Poland from 1939 to 1941 which is when the Soviet Union joined the Allied Forces as Germany had ended its nonaggression pact with them).

Learning about this period of time has filled in other blanks in my history knowledge. I knew that at the end of WWII that refugees were fleeing from the Soviets or hoping that the Americans or British made it to them first for they feared the brutality of the Russians. I always wondered if they knew about brutality from other refugees or if it was just spread as gossip of sorts. But now I realize, at least for the Poles, they already were aware of their brutality.

When the story stayed in the past, I really enjoyed it. The present was confusing as we only have Lena's point of view and she is in a medicine-induced haze. There are characters in the present that we don't know yet and it is very late in the novel that it is mentioned that at least some of them are grandchildren.

I'm always looking for WWII books that tell stories I haven't heard before and this is definitely one of them. It's interesting with endearing characters.

The narrator Rose Ackroyd does a really good job with the various character voices and it is a rather large cast of characters. Because of the shifting timeline, I do have a caution about listening to the audiobook. You will want to listen to it when you have few distractions. Luckily I listened to this on the weekend while moving mulch so I could focus closely on the story.

My review will be published at Girl Who Reads on Tuesday - https://www.girl-who-reads.com/2023/01/the-snow-hare-by-paula-lichtarowicz.html

I am so glad that I requested this audiobook through NetGalley & I am glad that they approved it. Being a historical fiction book we know that devastating things usually happen so it is not a surprise. I just finished this book and was practically in tears at the end. The choices and decisions made could come back and haunt you for the rest of your life and that is exactly what happened it Magdalena (Lena).

First, many thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Netgalley for providing an audio e-book in exchange for an honest review.

I thought that the reading of the book as an audio was exceptionally well done. I liked the accent and the intonation made it easy to listen to and understand the change in voices of the narrators. Well done and recommend the audio version.

As to the story, I had a hard time getting into this one and struggled to continue to the end, hence the rating of 3 stars. The overall premise, that life or fate determines your journey and life adventures, which are unexpected and not always what you would choose, resonates with true life.

Lena is a girl from a small unknown village and her life's dream is to be a doctor. But that was not the path her life allowed. Despite the bad that happens to her, she always found happiness. Her marriage is unhappy but she adores her daughter, and so on.

This is a sad story but so true to life. Recommend.