I enjoyed this book - I thought the writing was beautiful and I enjoyed the history, there were some details of WWII that I wasn't as familiar with included in the story.
However, I do agree with many of the reviews in that there is not enough character development, and I struggled to like many of the characters and/or understand some of their decisions. I didn't feel that the romance between Karolina & Jozef was believable/didn't feel the chemistry.
I find it difficult to review this book as there were some great aspects and I did enjoy reading it, but the lack of character development frustrated me.

Kraków, 1937: Painter, Jozef is commissioned to paint the portrait of the pampered younger daughter of a well-to-do Jewish family, and although he is reluctant, the dire straits he finds himself in mean that he is forced to accept the job.

When Jozef meets the Oderfeldt family, he has little liking for the parents, the spoiled Alicia, or her bookish older sister, Karolina. But as work on the painting progresses, his destiny becomes irrevocably entwined with the Oderfeldt family, as he develops an understanding of Alicia and falls in love with the quiet Karolina - and it is the magic of the painting that binds them.

But then war comes to Poland and the Odefeldts are forced to flee their home. The family become scattered, the lovers are divided, and the painting is lost, as they become caught up in the fortunes of war.

This is a story of love, survival and remembrance....

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The Light At The End Of The Day is a heartbreaking tale of a Jewish family torn apart by war, that draws heavily on the experiences of Eleanor Wasserberg's own family.

The book begins at the point where the Oderfeldt family are forced to flee Kraków in 1939, when it becomes clear that the German invasion is inevitable. Unfortunately, they have left their escape attempt too late, having decided to wait until the last minute to see whether the rumoured approaching war would come their way, and events sadly go awry.

The story then jumps back in time to 1937, when Jozef is commissioned to undertake the painting of Alicia. This seems a bit disorienting at first, but actually proves a skillful way for us to get to know the family, their foibles and secrets, and to establish the importance of Jozef's painting - before moving back to 1939 and continuing with what happens next.

Jozef's painting of Alicia is central to the novel and proves a rather original way to establish the relationships between the characters and tie all the strands together in the most magical of ways. The commissioning of the painting lays bare the inner workings of the Oderfeldt family; its creation forms the bond between Alicia, Jozef and Karolina; the mere idea of it proves a talisman; and its providence brings the threads of the story back together many years in the future.

I was very impressed how Eleanor Wasserberg brilliantly plays out the narrative on both the German and Russian sides of occupied Europe, so we learn about the lesser known fates of Jewish refugees in the Russian work camps. I was also very struck by how the beginning of her tale plays upon the fact that the Oderfeldts were busy keeping up appearances and entertaining their wealthy and influential friends while the events of Kristallnacht played out in Berlin, and how this shapes the reader's opinion of them as a dysfunctional family.

This is an epic tale of love, loss, suffering, survival and the bonds of family. It is an important and poignant account of a period of history we should never be allowed to forget. I found myself completely engrossed by both the story and the writing, and brokenhearted by the tragic nature of events, but they also show us that there can be hope even in the darkest of times - and it can be the strangest of things that give us solace and bring us back together.

I enjoy reading this as it started out quite good then as it went on it slowed a bit in the story. Plus it jump around the characters a lot. But overall it was a good read

For me, The Light at the End of the Day was a good book. It was very nearly a great book, but there were just a couple of things that, in my opinion, stopped the book from flowing as it could have and made it, at times, slow to get through.

I really enjoyed getting to know the characters. Despite many of them being flawed, I found them relatable and believable. The trouble with this was, I wanted to know them more. There were a lot of characters and I felt that very few of them were explored and explained adequately. I found myself forgetting who was who at times. Many of my favourite characters just disappeared until they were briefly mentioned again at the end. I wanted more from and about many of the personalities in the story.

I loved the setting/s which were so far removed from anything I've experienced. Despite this, though, I did find the frequent place and time hopping a bit difficult to keep up with at times and regularly found myself flipping back to remember what year I had been in in relation to the section I was about to begin.

I also felt that there were a few occasions where the build up to a certain event/change/moment was insufficient. There was often a lot of talking about what seemed like fairly unimportant parts of the story and then something fairly major would happen, seemingly out of nowhere (or maybe I'm just not good at picking up on subtle hints?!). I felt as though more build up would have made the story and characters more compelling.

Despite the above comments, however, I was so impressed by the originality of this story. It is truly unlike anything I've ever read before. I would certainly recommend it to lovers of historical fiction (though I would perhaps warn them of the few faults).

Many thanks to the author, Better Reading and Harper Collins for allowing me a sneak peek preview in exchange for my honest review.

This is a genre I normally love, and I was looking forward to this one, but I just didn’t like it. I felt the writing was a bit disjointed and big events just happened without any explanation... for example I didn’t understand the relationship between Adam and his wife and his French lover. Nor did I feel any chemistry between Karolina and Józef, all of a sudden, she was in love with him. I really didn’t connect with any of the characters and I think for this reason I found it hard to remember who was who, and had to keep reading back to remember what was going on. The pace of the book was a bit slow for me, I found I had read 40% and we were still in Kraków and only now was the painting finished. I struggled to get through this one and if it hadn’t been for a Better Reading Review, I don’t think I would have finished. A positive of the book was how the Polish Jews ended up in the labour camps, this part of the book was interesting and well written, but it wasn’t enough to make me like the book anymore.

4.5

Okay I begin with my only negative opinion on the writing style. When we had the POV of the mother and we would randomly we have the conscious of the neighbour? It was bizarre. It happens throughout the entire book where we would randomly get a line about what the neighbour, Janina, was thinking. There just needed to be more cohesiveness in the text. That one negative aside, I commend the author on capturing the feelings of disbelief, hysteria, horror, the list of emotions could go on, that would have been felt by those who in labour and concentration camps across Europe.

It was interesting to read a story written about a Jewish Polish family who essentially buried their head in the sand when the events leading up to WW2 were occurring and they still didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of their situation until towards the end of the book. There would have been families like this in Europe, the ones who didn’t flee when things started to get bad for Jews in Germany after 1933, the ones who stuck around even after Germany invaded and they knew about the pogroms occurring within Germany. So I really liked this aspect of reading the book, however with that being said I found it really hard to connect with Anna, the mother, who was so dismissive of the people who helped her and seemed so ungrateful. I guess she was grappling with her new reality of being a refugee and not the wealthy lady she was in Krakow but it did annoy me throughout and I found I didn’t connect with her character at all. Also her daughter was such a brat. I think it did capture the absolute hysteria that the Jews, Poles, Gypsies and other people felt who were taken to various camps over Europe during WW2. We see the family go to a camp in Russia, as this was a common occurrence in areas occupied by the Soviets to take Poles and Jewish people to camps. However, as mentioned earlier, I wasn’t able to connect with the family this storyline followed due to their characters being portrayed the way they were.

I felt the ending was super rushed as well and wanted more detail about the years we didn’t get. The ending was sad but also beautiful ( read it and it makes sense why I say beautiful) and showed the reality of the camps, German and Russian alike.