This was a very hearbreaking story. A good possiblity that shows the incredable faith and courage of those who could only do their best.

A very beautiful but very sad story. I was struck by the way this story was written, which being historical in nature, can be a bit difficult to keep the reader captive. But completely immersed in the whole book.

Emily and Danner will be my favorite characters forever, this relationship so affectionate since childhood and how it continued and prospered for so many years; until due to the Second World War they had to separate but without losing hope of one day meeting again. But when they really meet again, the situation is not the best and with this, reading this book becomes heartbreaking and quite entertaining.

Shari is an exceptional author, really good at writing her books.
Totally recommended.

I am a huge fan of historical fiction, and this story did not disappoint. This was a powerful and emotional story that absolutely pulled at your heart strings. The characters are very relatable and it is so easy to fall in love with this story and the romance that develops. I am new to Shari Ryan's work, but have definitely added her to my list of favorites. I highly recommend this read to anyone interested in historical fiction. Huge thank you to Shari J Ryan, NetGalley, and Bookouture for allowing me to read this advanced copy.

The Nurse Behind The Gates by Shari J Ryan. Emilie marries Otto and they move to Dachau. Otto is a doctor and Emilie gets roped into the experiments he’s denying he’s conducting on the people there. It’s a very hard read and it jumps from timeline to timeline and person to person so you really have to check the headings on the chapters to make sure you’re following properly. It’s very well written and covers obviously very hard stuff but love really does conquer all.

I was so excited to read this story when I read the description, but I was in a very busy period so I couldn’t read it before the pub date. I just wish I read it sooner though. I love historical novels and especially reading about the war. This was a compelling and emotional read and some passages were very intense. It’s about love and loss and very tragic, definitely a story to remember. I couldn’t put it down and read it in a day. Thank you so much netgalley and the publisher for this ARC. 🙏🏻

In this World War II historical fiction novel, readers follow Emilie and her friend Danner separated by the war and by the Nazi state’s race laws. Emilie left her nurse training to marry her husband Otto, whose uncle Dietrich organized a job for him (and a support job for Emilie) at Dachau where Danner is imprisoned. Witness to unspeakable horrors and trapped by Dietrich and the Nazi regime, Emilie does what she can to keep the many patients at the camp alive. Revealing the horrors of the Nazi regime to those who lived in that society but had no idea what really went on, Ryan successfully uses Emilie and Danner’s perspectives to craft this World War II historical fiction novel. The two perspectives and the different worlds which the characters inhabit balance each other nicely, and neither perspective overwhelms the other. With multiple narrators and multiple timelines, readers need to pay attention to the novel to stay on track, and Ryan’s characters are the heart of this novel. With the tragic setting and the difficult circumstances the characters exist in, Ryan handles these difficult events and experiences appropriately, taking them seriously without making it graphic, making this a powerful work of World War II historical fiction.

The Nurse Behind the Gates is another masterly crafted novel by Shari J. Ryan. This novel will pull at your heartstrings, make you want to shout out in frustration, but also show you that even in the deepest and darkest of places, love does prevail.

Shari takes readers on an in depth journey of survival, love, determination, and grit. When Emilie meets Danner as a young child, she knows she has found more than just a friend. She has found her best friend. In Danner, Emilie has found her home. Danner’s heart burns with a fiery determination for Emilie and with Emilie is where he knows his true peace. When the boots of Hitler and his Nazi’s begin to stomp across Germany, and the noose Hitler has cast for all of Germany’s Jews begins to tighten, Danner knows he must do something that will break his own heart and shatter Emilie’s into a million pieces, but if they have a chance of surviving this hellish reality, Danner knows it must be done. If you love something, you set it free and if it comes back, it’s meant to be.

The Nurse Behind the Gates is an extraordinary example of love and resilience. Shari J. Ryan does such a profound job at showcasing the love between Danner and Emilie. As the reader, I felt the love, the connection, and the bond created between the two characters. Shari did a phenomenal job of bringing these characters to life and it kept me turning each page so I could find out what was going to happen.

The Nurse Behind the Gates is not an easy book to read, but it is an important book to read.

One of the things I have always struggled with as I have learned and studied history is how did people living around the concentration camps not "know" anything about what was going on in their backyards. Ms Ryan gives us a glimpse into what growing up in Munich in the 1930's would be like for a group of friends both Jewish and not.

Emilie, Danner, Otto and the others navigate the changing landscape. We get to see the emotional and real-life impact on all of them and their decisions. I appreciated how relatable the characters were even when they had to do things they didn't agree with.

Reading The Nurse Behind the Gates gave a good sense of the deception and stress that permeated WWII era Germany. I won't go as far as saying that it changed the prejudice I have for the perpetrators of the crimes committed, but it does give me a better appreciation for the average citizens.

TRIGGER WARNING: Nazi brutality and anti-semitic ideology
1942, Emilie arrives at Dachau to help her husband Otto with his medical experiments. She believes the inmates are all criminals so is shocked to find their former childhood friend Danner, a Jew, among the prisoners. His only crime is being Jewish and she is determined to save him...
The Nurse Behind The Gates is an historical novel set in the 1930s and 40s.
Emilie and her husband are forced to help the Nazis to help save German soldiers in the freezing seas. They join the medical team at Dachau where experiments use the inmates as live subjects. Death is a necessary evil for the cause but Emilie is distraught at the thought of her first love being in danger.
The book is written in 1942 to show Emilie's experiences in the concentration camp but also has chapters from the past to show the friendship with Danner and how they both reached their current situation. The experiment scenes were quite horrific and I had to put the book down to go and get distracted by happy thoughts. I felt desperately sad for Otto. He is in an impossible situtation with his uncle and the Nazis and also knows that he is second best for his wife.
There was one part of the book that didn't ring true for me. I didn't really believe that Danner would put himself in danger when he could have written to his old neighbours for information about his missing father instead of travelling back to Germany himself and abandoning his family. Other than this, the book was completely captivating and I felt immersed in the lives of the characters.
The Nurse Behind The Gates is a devastatingly emotional imagining of the Nazi experiments at Dachau.

This was a remarkable and emotional read. We follow a group for friends from childhood, when one of their friends is separated because he is Jewish it changes the dynamics of the group. I went through so many emotions while reading this book. There were some tough chapters. The characters are great, and the world building made you feel like you were in the middle of the war. A wonderful book that shows true friendship and the turmoil of war.

I found the constant flipping of the book between time periods quite off putting. Just as I felt the story started to flow,it stopped.
I didn’t particularly like the character of Otto as I found him weak.
On a positive note the story was realistic and showed the horror and atrocities of the concentration camps and the activities that took place in there.
For me this was one of the weakest stories I have read by this author so was slightly disappointed. Something was missing for me.
3 stars

My first proper historical fiction book and safe to say I will be reading another. After visiting Auschwitz last year, this really brought to life the horror at the concentration camps and the various emotions of the people held captive there.

This was such a hard book to read but written really well. It really brought to life the will too want to survive the hell that was happening around the war and the concentration camps. However, I did find the chopping and changing between the years a little difficult follow at times.

I love Emilie and Danner as characters and how you could just tell the love they have for eachother which never faded. Proper childhood sweethearts.

This book did make me cry with sadness and happiness. The book just gave such a great picture of the war and what some of the people in the war experienced.

Shari J Ryan put her all in this heartbreaking yet beautiful novel based in World Ward Two. Quite a labor of love, dedicated to her uncle who devastatingly died at 17…a month before liberation. You can feel her deep emotion in the words. This book touched my soul and broke it all at once.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like to go through the torment prisoners did in the camps. Ryan spent years researching for this novel, even traveling to camps in Dachau, touching the same walls the victims touched.

I’m in awe of her. I love her thrillers and her historical fiction . She can cross back and forth between both genres. It’s hard to write one genre, but two? Quite the feat. If you haven’t read her books, I highly recommend checking them out.

Thank you, Shari J Ryan, Bookouture, & Netgalley for my early copy! All opinions are my own.

I loved this book! It's about a group of young friends in Germany and follows them as they navigate years of change brought on by the Nazi regime, and the impossible choices they have to make in order to protect themselves and others. Such a heartbreaking tale at times, but very insightful & gave me a lot to think about! I loved the facts woven into the story and felt every emotion - what an emotional rollercoaster ride it was! Highly recommended!

Thanks to NetGalley, Bookouture, and Shari J. Ryan for an advance digital copy of this book for review. All opinions are my own.

BLOG TOUR REVIEW

Review for 'The Nurse Behind The Gates' by Shari J Ryan.

Well, what can I say but wow!!! This story is definitely not going to leave my head anytime soon. Firstly I must congratulate Shari J Ryan for yet another absolutely extraordinary novel that seriously needs to be made into a movie which I assure would be best selling!!!

This book is extremely powerful and extremely well written. It is devastatingly heart-breaking and beautiful at the same time. It is absolutely rammed with emotions that will make you smile, cry and laugh on the roller-coaster ride to hell that is the Holocaust. I absolutely LOVED how this book was composed of two stories perfectly intertwined together to make one of the most emotional reads I have ever read!!! It is a journey filled with trust, heartbreak, love, death, hate and love being read during a lifetime of sadness, family, romance, trauma and so much more just takes the reader on an absolute rollercoaster rider of emotion. It is great when you come along an absolute gem like this as normally you would expect a book about a holocaust story to be dark and horrific throughout but Shari manages to show the horrors while lightening up the reading tone during every other chapter and giving the reader hope and reasons to smile. This book was very hard to read during both Emilie and Danner's stories but there were certain parts that will stay with me for a very long time and that were soul destroying. What the Nazi's did to these innocent people makes me absolutely sick to my soul. My heart screamed out to so many of these characters for what they went through. The fact that Shari has done her research and cares about her characters absolutely shines through the pages of this heart wrenching, captivating, traumatic and beautiful story. Shari's writing and evocative descriptions captivates the very essence of how the characters feel, look and everything they are going through bringing them to life as if you are standing next to them going through and seeing everything that they are with them.I was completely invested in all their stories and lives. I am sad to say goodbye to them and they will live in my mind for a very long time!!!

This is one of those books where you need to completely clear your schedules and get the tissues at the ready!! I was absolutely glued to the pages from beginning to the end. I could not put my kindle down until I had finished reading the very last word. I just had to know what was going to happen next in the story and to the characters and I devoured it in one sitting. I also had tears streaming down my eyes on several occasions. Shari really is an extremely talented writer who captivates your heart and attention regardless of what genre book she writes. If it is written by Shari you are guaranteed to be in for a rollercoaster ride of a journey!!

Again congratulations Shari on an absolutely stunning emotional rollercoaster ride of a book!! I would say this book is is even more emotional and memorable than the likes of 'The' diary of Anne Frank'. I cannot wait to read the best of your books and this is the reason you are on my top favourite 3 historical authors list!!!

Overall a heart wrenching, absolutely beautifully devastating story filled with love, loss, hope and so, so much more!!!

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The Nurse Behind the Gates is the new book from Shari J.Ryan set during World War Two. It follows the story of a group of young people whose lives are deeply affected by the events which occurred during this time period. It’s a little bit different from a lot of the WW2 historical fiction that is out there at the moment in that it centres on the Dachau labour camp in Germany but has a balance between following an inmate and those on the outside who are working there.

The prologue opens in July 1942 as we meet Emilie newly married to Otto. They have spent the past five months living close to the camp at Dachau and Emilie has been selected to aid Otto and his Uncle Dietrich with his work in the lab/hospital. But Emilie was brought there under false pretences. Yes she was happy to stay at home and tend to the house for Otto as continuing her nursing studies at the university in Munich wasn’t a possibility for her at that time. But when asked to help out in the hospital little did she know what she was really there for and when she sees a familiar face she knows she can’t back out of what she has gotten herself into. There are too many precious lives at stake and one in particular.

The chapters set in and around Dachau were the strongest in the book because they felt really relevant to the overall story and they pushed the plot on. The labour camp which to all intents and purposes turns into a concentration camp has a dark and ominous feel to it. Emilie can never settle there and the reader can’t blame her at all. For she is fiercely opposed to what Hitler has started and continues to rein upon so many. Yet, through no choice she finds herself at the centre of evil and the dread, grief and tension she feels increases with every chapter. Things are dark and heavy and when she walks through those gates where it is claimed work will set you free she is fraught with tension, angst and unease.

At all times, she wants to do her utmost best for the people incarcerated there. They have been sent there because of their supposed criminal actions but when she hears words spoken that only one person could have possible said she knows that now Jews and other marginalised people in society are arriving to the camp. She must do everything in her power to save her friend Danner. After all, he was her first true love and that love has never diminished only rules and regulations have separated them. One could only think of the happy life that could have existed between the pair if Hitler had never come to power. But they find themselves where they do and now she is married to Otto but that won’t stop her from helping him in any way she can be it big or small.

I found Otto in the war years to be quite weak and spineless. He lived in a perpetual state of fear and was afraid to step out of line or try and do anything secretly in order to help Danner and others. I thought he was so cold considering he had grown up with Danner and was his best friend. Otto was afraid of what would happen to him if it was discovered what Emilie had become engaged in. I wish he would have had half the guts that Emilie did. She also came across as being much cleverer than he was. She wanted to put all her medical knowledge to good use. But to say the experiments and human research trials that were conducted were horrific would be an understatement and it was heart-breaking to see Emilie partake in something that she abhorred and even more so when she knew that one wrong move and Danner could be lost forever. Emilie demonstrated such courage and steadfastness whereas I think Otto fell apart. She had many layers to her which I think others around her underestimated. As for Danner, the chapters from his viewpoint were very well written and developed and I completely understood him as a character and developed great compassion for him. It wasn’t until the end that I realised one of his bunkmates Hans had previously featured in The Bookseller of Dachau and that is definitely a must read story.

The book chops and changes an awful lot with its timeline and to be honest I thought it would have worked better to start at 1933 and work its way consecutively to 1945 instead of being interspersed throughout with chapters moving back and forth. I felt this dragged the story backwards instead of continuously moving forwards. A dual timeline story works best for me moving back and forth between the past and the present day as in now rather than in the format in which it occurred here. I felt I was making progress with where the characters were in the war and what they were experiencing only to turn the page and it brought me back to their childhood. Yes, I understood this was to allow the reader to build up a complete picture of each character and how they changed over time and the reasons for this change but I just felt jolted from one period to another and I found myself wanting to read much more about how Emilie, Otto and Danner were coping at Dachau.

It was quite some time into the book before Emilie actually steps inside the gates of the camp and I was waiting for it to occur and when it did I wanted even more detail than we got. That’s not to say what I was reading wasn’t interesting. It was and to honestly it was fascinating the experiments that were carried out and the crazy reasons for them and I found my interest piqued as it was an aspect to the war I had known anything about. Towards the end things felt rushed once the Americans started bombing Munich and the surrounding areas including areas near to Dachau. I got the sense the author needed to get to the end of the story. A bit more fleshing out would have been welcome although the epilogue did tie up all the loose ends.

The Nurse Behind the Gates is a good story, although not my favourite by this author. The depth of love that Emilie had for Danner was real, heartfelt and never wavered despite the road the war took her on. She showed such maturity, bravery and strength in the way she dealt with things. The characters were well developed and the situations they find themselves in and the emotions they are forced to deal with and choices they have to make will break readers hearts. This is a story of love, friendship, survival and above all else hope. Hope is what will see them through the darkest of times. Readers of historical fiction will enjoy this just the structuring of the timeline let it down slightly for me.

The Nurse Behind the Gates is another fantastic historical fiction set in World War II by Shari Ryan. This story began with the lives of these close young friends, Emilie, Danner, Otto, Felix, and Gertie living a normal life in Germany. Danner and Emilie had a strong bond of love for each other. Their lives changed drastically when the Nazis occupied Germany. Danner was Jewish and laws began to take effect on the Jewish people that caused those families to be seen as lower class. They were driven out of their homes, taken to concentration camps, and separated from their families and friends. When the time comes for Danner and his family to move to Poland, he reaches out to Otto asking him to promise to marry Emilie and to take care of her. Throughout the book, the story is told from the point of view of Emilie and Danner.

Fast forward and Otto and Emilie are married and move to the town of Dachau where Otto begins a job in research at a prison camp as a doctor. Otto's Uncle Dietrich was instrumental and almost forceful with Otto taking this job. Emilie had not finished nursing school at the time of their move. When she asks about joining Otto and working with him at the research facility, he is apprehensive, but his uncle welcomes her to join. One day not long after her start, she recognizes one of the prisoners as Danner and soon realizes what type of research is being conducted. They are experimenting on human lives. She does everything she can do to bring him food and to change data in order to save the lives of the prisoners. What happens to Danner? Did Otto know what was happening in this camp when he accepted his job? Is Emilie able to save Danner? How does Uncle Dietrich play a part in all of this?

This is a story based on truth of events that really took place during the evil regime of Hitler. Hard to imagine the cruelty of how anyone can allow things of this nature to happen. It was an emotional book and another amazing story by Shari Ryan. Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a page-turner. Emilie, Danner, Felix, Gertie, and Otto grew up next door and were inseparable as kids growing up in Germany in the years before WWII. The story starts with Emilie marrying Otto and coming to work with him at the laboratory he’s working at in Dachau, where he’s doing research. She thought there were only political prisoners there, but when she arrived she was horrified at what she saw there and more so when she ran into their childhood friend Danner, who is Jewish. The story is told from the perspective of Danner and Emilie and it flashes back to their childhood together growing up in Munich in the days before WWII.


My thoughts:
This was a page-turner. It was hard to put down as I wanted to find out what happened to all my friends. The timeline wasn’t linear so it made it a little more confusing. Otherwise, I thought the author did a great job building the story and the characters. It makes you see the brainwashing and how controlling the Nazi regime was. I definitely would like to read more stories by this author.


Thanks to @bookouture, @netgalley, and the author of this ARC.

I was excited to read this story based on the description and it was a very intense story! My only complaint is the formatting. I wish they would have had all the flashbacks together being the story forward instead of the back and forth. It was confusing from time to time. The things Jews went through in the camps was horrific and there is some great detail given on some things. It was interesting to view things from someone who wasn't a Jew but was 'tricked' into a situation they didn't know how to get out of. Interesting read for anyone who likes WWII historical fiction.

In my opinion, historical fiction is definitely Shari J. Ryan's sweet spot. All her historical stories have been very different from one another. They all give us different aspects and insights into what happened during that time in our history (most importantly in her history) from different lenses. In this case, Emi is married to aspiring doctor Otto. They have known each other from childhood along with many other neighborhood friends, including Danner, the only Jewish person among them. Danner must try to protect his family and also must protect Emi, his true love from the horrors that could befall them during this time. The story is not fast moving but it is full of all the heartache of that time when Emi is thrown into a situation that she is not ready for and must keep doing or the sake of her family and Danner.