THE GODDESS OF WARSAW by Lisa Barr

5 stars!

This A-MAY-ZING historical, page-turner of a novel, the latest from the endlessly talented Barr, starts with the glamor of a legendary star in the Golden Age of Hollywood and then throws us back in time to her secret past as a Jewish assassin and Warsaw Ghetto survivor.

Before becoming Lena Browning in America, Bina Blonski is a beautiful, talented, tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed star actress whose Aryan looks conceal her Jewish identity. The daughter of privilege, she grows up in an ultra-wealthy, cultured family who considered themselves more German than Jewish. She’s a rising star in Poland theatre – until in 1943 she’s outed as a Jew by the fanatical Nazi-supporting Polish father of her best friend. Bina along with her husband Jakub get sent to the crumbling, crowded, decrepit Warsaw Ghetto – where the Nazi’s are starving Jews before gunning them down or shipping them off to concentration camps. Lena starts as a smuggler via the sewers, trading sexual favors for food, medicine, and basic supplies for the camp. She evolves into both an assassin and resistance fighter from there. Lisa Barr brilliantly spins an edge-of-your-seat tale as she goes back in time.

Barr brings WWII in Poland so alive that you become deeply immersed and deeply vested in people from the Warsaw Ghetto. The main characters range from the woman leader of the resistance movement against the Nazis, the intellectual husband trying to record it all for history, his smoldering handsome and brave younger brother who lost both his wife and daughter to the Nazis, the young orphan of a leading musical family, and preteen girls being targeted for a brothel to serve German soldiers. All this culminates in the true story of the Warsaw Ghetto’s  heroic stand-off with the Nazi’s using smuggled in weapons – choosing to bravely fight the Nazi’s to death rather than be shipped off to by murdered in prison camps.

Fast forward to the present where Sienna Hayes, the latest young rising star in Hollywood wants to direct and star in a film about Lena’s legendary life as a movie star. But Lena sets her own demands as she agrees, and these involve revealing the highly guarded secret of her past, as well as the fury that continues to burn bright within her towards surviving Nazi’s.

This must read for 2024 will inspire you, if you haven’t already, to go back and read Lisa’s other scintillating works including Woman on Fire and The Unbreakables.

Thanks to Lisa Barr, Harper and Netgalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.