I first fell in love with Reay and her writing after reading “Dear Mr. Knightly.” She quickly became a must-read author. As she’s ventured into historical fiction, I appreciate her writing even more. These stories are on the more obscure side of history and obviously well researched. “The Berlin Letters” is no different.

Written in dual timelines to encompass the entire story is chef’s kiss from me. There is also a touch of suspense that kept me swiping those pages. I was still in elementary school during the later timeline of this story and remember hearing some of the names and places on the news. Just recently I studied the Iron Curtain with my homeschool co-op class, which opened my eyes even further to the historical happenings.

It was really interesting to read about the after effects of ww2 and the Russian control of east Berlin, which I have never really known much about. Heartbreaking, but great story.

This book has everything that I look for in historical fiction - a compelling story, strong character development, and a new perspective on an important time in history. I loved the dual perspectives and the way the story unfolded over time. Plus, I learned a lot about the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. Absolutely recommend this for fans of historical fiction.

Cold war, code breaking, the CIA, the Berlin Wall.... This is a period of time that seems to be under-represented in historical fiction, the era of the separation of East and West Berlin and Germany. I absolutely loved this book and I look forward to more from this author. And hopefully more authors will take up this period of time.

With all the historical fiction I’ve read, after starting this one, I realized I think this is my first Cold War historical fiction. And it’s one war that I don’t know much about. So this was very eye-opening for me. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy historical fiction, even when it’s not based on or inspired by a real person, I know that the research needed to make them feel real and believable has to be thorough, and this one you can easily see required a lot.

Not only do we get to see a closer look at the Cold War, but we also get to see some espionage that takes place during it through the use of codes within letters. I’ve only read a small handful of spy fiction, but this one is probably my favorite of them all! The amount of details around the espionage was not only informative but was enjoyable to read, I wanted to learn more about the details around code breaking and the amount of effort needed to create the codes in the first place. It was so interesting!

From the very start of this, I was entranced. The prologue sets up the novel by heartbreakingly beautifully describing the horrors the people of Berlin faced the day they put up the barbed wire fence separating the east side from the west. Just from those few short pages at the beginning, my heart was entirely captured, and wanted to know what happened next. I flowed through the rest of the book with ease, I loved the different timelines we see bouncing between Luisa and her father, Haris. The generational story arc was fitting for this novel and written beautifully.

I highly recommend this for anyone who enjoys war fiction, historical fiction, and spy fiction!

I absolutely loved it! Another delightful read from Katherine Reay. Fast-paced, dual narrators, easy to follow. Historical fiction at its finest—the details don’t bore and the storyline keeps you wanting more. I’m also a sucker for a neat and tidy happy ending. 😍

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Wow! I can't begin to describe how much this book pulled me in from the beginning to the end. I was totally invested. Luisa Voekler's story is full of heartache, love, discovery, family, unknown, sacrifice, and much, much more! This story ranges from the beginning of the Berlin Wall to the end of the Cold War in November 1989. As the reader we start off our journey with a brief glimpse of Luisa's life right at the time the wall started to appear. Then we jump into her life as an adult in 1989. Luisa is unaware of much of her history and it all starts to unfold before her eyes as she is working and sees a symbol that leads her to dive into a search of her own.

I loved the code breaking and spy aspect of this book. It was truly incredible. Katherine Reay has woven an incredible story of Luisa's life and family and codes and spies that hooked me and had me not wanting to set this book down for anything. I had moments that I was holding my breath, sitting on the edge of my seat, getting very nervous for the characters and hoping that all would turn out well.

Luisa's journey is pretty incredible. She is willing to risk her life to save the life of the father she's never known. And it was truly a ride! Being pulled into Berlin during the Cold War had me feeling for those who truly lived during that time. I remember very well as a kid hearing about living conditions in Berlin during that time, seeing news stories about the Berlin Wall, and listening to President Reagan on TV saying to "Tear down that wall!" I remember watching in awe and with chills as the wall came down and the cheers and freedom and relief that was being restored to the people living there! It is something that I will never forget. I was young at the time but it left such a strong impression on me. So I always find it very interesting to learn more about it and to read these fictional stories based on it. And this one was very well done!

Grab a copy! And make sure to clear your schedule to read it!

Content: Clean. There are some moments of mild peril and discussing of the wall and the fear and heartache from it. And there are many aspects of spies throughout the book.

I received a copy from the publisher, Harper Muse, via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions in the review are my own.

Happy Reading!!!

Received this in exchange for an honest review. Thank you NetGalley.
What a sunrise that the book opens with the date Aug 13, 1961 as I was there on vacation with my parents.
The book is well done, and and is about a family that is divided by the wall that then divides Berlin. As a young girl grows up thinking that her parents are both dead in East Berlin she finds all is not to be believed.

This is historical fiction set at the end of the Cold War. While the heroine seemed too naive at times, this was a compulsive read for me. The author manages to include a lot of Cold War and Berlin Wall history and make it a good read at the same time.

Thank you to the author, Harper Muse and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a gripping read about a recent period in history, told in two separate threads/timelines and POVs. One follows Luisa, a young woman working as a codebreaker for the CIA in Washington D.C., and the other follows her father, living in East Berlin around the time when the Berlin wall went up, and the years following through to 1989. Luisa's mother managed to get her infant over the barbed wire precursor to the wall, and Luisa is raised by her grandparents, who soon moved to the US after the wall went up. Luisa's father was a fervent believer in East German politics (until he wasn't), which did not meet with the favor of his in-laws. Luisa grows up believing both her parents are dead, and doesn't discover the truth until after her grandfather dies.

The author does a fantastic job of weaving the two strands of the story together, and giving lots of historic detail - the oppressive suspicion that was the rule in the Eastern bloc comes through so clearly it's chilling. I was living in Belgium and travelling to Eastern Europe periodically in those years, so can vouch for the accuracy. The only thing that really bothered me in this book was the interspersing of bits of German in the story - not because of the language, but because almost none of it was correct. I would have expected that something so embedded in this story would deserve a fact checker. Maybe I'm being pedantic, and yes, my 100% fluency in both German and English will not be the rule for readers, but I wish there had been the same attention to this detail as to so much of the other details in this book.

A fascinating and well-paced and well-told read with Reay's hallmarks of readable style, fascinating history and relatable characters.


Read this review in anticipation of our virtual conversation for Warwick's San Diego March 14

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book. The views expressed are entirely my own.

I’ve read and very much enjoyed several of Katherine Reay’s books before, but the historical fiction and thriller elements of this novel were new to me. Reay does them very well, along with the excellent character development and flowing style I’ve always enjoyed before. They added up to a compelling read that I only put down from time to time because I needed a break from the difficult subject matter.

While the historical events portrayed here - postwar Germany with a focus on Berlin in between the day the wall that divided the city went up and the night the wall came down - occurred during my lifetime there was a lot that was new to me in this book. Between Reay’s wonderful characters and excellent writing these times came alive for me. In particular, the day-to-day pain and suffering of the East Berliners living without hope of escape from a grim, constrained environment in which nothing really works very well and everyone is spying on everyone else was so vividly portrayed that it will stay with me for quite awhile. And the joy of the night the wall was opened and huge crowds surged through the gates was thrilling.

The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay gripped me from the very start. It kept me reading late into the night. I just had to find out what was going to happen next!

Luisa Voekler has always been good at solving puzzles and cracking codes. By now, she expected to be moving her way up the ladder at the CIA. It’s 1989, the Cold War is simmering away, and she is working in a department decoding messages from World War II.

But when a letter comes across her desk bearing an infinity symbol, it sparks a memory of another letter, one she saw as a child bearing that same mark. When she discovers a batch of letters under the floorboards of her grandparents’ house from a father she believed was dead, key truths that she has been lead to believe start to crumble around her.

Luisa has been training for this moment since she was a child. She just didn’t know it. Which is a good thing, because she’s going to have to dig deep if she is going to do the impossible, freeing her father from an East German prison and getting them both out of East Berlin.

Life behind the Iron Curtain, the fall of the Berlin Wall, codebreaking, spies, secrets hidden in the past, make up a captivating story that spans almost three decades.

I really loved that while Luisa has a brilliant mind, she doubts her own abilities and feels as though she isn’t good enough. She still carries with her the disappointment left from a setback early on in her career. I found her journey towards believing in her potential, or should I say, allowing herself to believe in her capabilities to be refreshingly realistic.

I love a WWII setting for historical fiction, but it was such a nice change to read a book set in the less distant past.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Thank you to Harper Muse for providing me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. I thoroughly enjoyed The Berlin Letters and I’m very excited to read more by this author!

This winter I read (well listened) a book called The Portrait of Emily Price. I absolutely loved it. I loved the author’s writing style and how she can paint a picture in your mind that you can see. So when I was approached by a publishing house asking if I would read her newest book that she has coming out, I was over the moon and answered with a hearty yes. It did take me a bit to get to reading the book (my life is so busy right now) but when I started to read I am pretty sure I binged 68% in one sitting at work.

Luisa is merely 4 years old when her world is turned upside down. Sprouting up overnight is the Berlin Wall in the form of barbed wire, for the moment that is. Every Sunday her mother would take her to her grandparent’s house for lunch, that is until that day. For one reason or another, I guess I am not still 100% on I suppose her mother tossed her over the barbed wire to her grandparents. Her grandparents take her and eventually, a year or so later move to America to find a better life for themselves. Luisa grows up and goes to college and eventually finds work at the CIA as a decoder. One thing leads to another and she begins to find out about the life that she left behind. This book was so well written. It gave me a view of the war that I guess I have never read before. I usually read books on the receiving end of the issues ie Jews, etc. This book is from the point of a young German woman who is now a naturalized American and a German who used to write propaganda and now has the Stazi after him.

I will admit that at times I was enjoying Luisa’s story so much that I honestly hated to leave her story and go to her father’s point of view. It wasn’t enough to lower my star level because it doesn’t take anything away from the story if I am being honest, it would just throw off my groove a little bit. The book is well researched I can tell. The author took her time researching various codes that people would hide in letters. I loved the character of Luisa, she seems scrappy I guess is the word I would use. She is intelligent and knows what she wants and when she puts her mind to it she does it. I am happy that the author managed to squeeze in some romance, because honestly sometimes a book isn’t complete unless the main character finds love in the process. I was so happy that the father got the happy ending that he deserved. I would definitely read more books by her, I have several on my Amazon Wish List to price watch.

The Berlin Letters receives a 5 out of 5 for me! I’ve read a lot of historical fiction but this was my first one based around The Berlin Wall. I honestly don’t feel like this time period is written about enough. It’s written very well, factually accurate and overall absolutely amazing. I highly recommend!

This is my first novel by this author of historical fiction and I already know I will be reading her backlist and future releases. Centered around the rise and collapse of the Berlin Wall, the wonderfully researched and written novel is told from alternating timelines of the present day life of Luisa, a CIA agent working with coding and written correspondence between her grandfather and father. Being old enough to just remember some of the events captured in the story, along with a mystery/spy element really held my interest until the last pages.

The font and stylized photograph on the cover (The outfit! The car! The graffiti!) perfectly portray the era of the Cold War

I was fascinated by the events depicted in The Berlin Letters, which is set between 1961 and 1989, the period during which East and West Berlin were divided by a wall erected by the Russian controlled government in East Berlin. Author Katherine Reay has done a marvelous job of creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion amongst the population of East Berlin right from the first pages where Monica Voeckler, stranded in East Berlin with her husband and toddler, throws her little girl over the barbed wire dividing the city to her parents who have moved to the other side. While I was aware of the Berlin wall, I had never before thought about the livesof the people living on either side, nor of their extended families. I loved the insight this book, through superbly crafted characters, provided into those lives. The plot was beautifully developed and intriguing. It kept me guessing to the end. I was fascinated with the code that Walther taught to both Luisa and Haris and the way that the letters Haris wrote were used. This story is emotionally harrowing at times, shocking and yet gripping and immersive. I’ll definitely be putting it on my keeper shelf.

I believe I already did this??!! It should also be on Bookbub, Amazon and Goodreads. If you cannot find it let me know.

I’ve been a Katherine Reay fan for years but this by far is my favorite of hers. I quickly became fascinated by this subject and time period rarely written about. I paused throughout to do a little research since I found it so intriguing. Her meticulous research and grasp of the different time periods flowed flawlessly rather than being confusing. Her characters were developed and believable with their own flaws and humanity. Unexpected twists throughout left me on the edge of my seat. I’d love to see this made into a movie, but in the meantime I eagerly look forward to her next book!

The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay was incredibly hard to put down. The book through a dual timeline begins the night the Berlin Wall went up, cutting East Berlin off from West Berlin and spans to the wall coming down in 1989. The stories of Luisa Voekler and her father Haris Voekler are woven together so well, with Luisa not even realizing at first her father was alive. The jump between points of view and periods of time was well done and easy to follow. The detail about this period in history and the picture painted of Easter Berlin were incredible, fascinating and even a little bit surprising to hear about, given that neighbours were coerced or incentivized to snitch on each other to ensure compliance. An excellent read!

Thank you to Harper Muse, Netgalley and the author for an eARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.