Extremely grateful to the publishers and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy for review purposes. This is an honest review and I have not been paid for providing this.
This book based upon true events, highlights the worst and best in human beings and how they treat one another. The subject matter had me thinking that it would be extremely graphic in terms of the treatment dished out. Fortunately it is not described in overly graphic detail. An absolutely wonderfully written tale and I am so glad that I had the opportunity to read. Not going to give away the story, just read it for yourself. Well worth the effort.

A memoir, a love story and a story of survival during the darkest days of European history . My grandmother left Germany in 1939 and narrowly escaped the fates in the camps her relatives were not so lucky. This memoir of love and survival struck a chord with me. I literally couldnt put it down

Amazing read, true story, brings the horror of the Holocaust to life. A beautiful love story in tragic circumstances

This is a beautiful book. It's sad but heartwarming at the same time. The writing captures how amazing strong and beautiful Lale was. He faced death on a daily basis and risks his life to give a little food to the other who has even less than him. I could be wrong but it came across as he felt given a little was his way of saying sorry for his role in the camps.
I cannot begin to imagine the horrors that was suffered by all in the camps. The author helps portray this very well in a heart breaking yet engaging read. I love it.

Of course, this is a vey difficult book to read, but definitely a very important book to have been written! Heather Morris recounts Lale's experiences in Europe in the grip of Nazism and the concentration camp Auschwitz. We are reminded that even in the most horrible place, in the darkest time, under the most inhumane circumstances, love and kindness prevail. This extraordinary story of love, friendship and humanity, breaks our hearts and yet leaves us hopeful.

A moving story blending effortlessly fact into a novel style read

Wow. Beautiful, simply written and haunting.
A must-read, brings another perspective to life in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Very interesting approach as written in present tense, which I haven’t noticed in a book before.

5*. No more needs to be said.

On reading past the epilogue, you discover that this is not a novel but a true story - even more powerful.

I am a second generation survivor as my father and his family were in the Holocaust and have read many books about it, but this one touched me so deeply. This is a story of resilience, survival and love and is a very powerful one that needs to be heard.
This beautifully written and powerful book is the true story of Lale and Gita Sokolov who meet in Auschwitz. whose power of love gave them hope for their future outside of the camps and Lale never stopped believing they would leave one day.
Lale says "Choosing to live is an act of defiance, a form of heroism"

To begin with, I want to point out that this book was an eBook I received as an ARC from NetGalley for free, but all thoughts are still my own. The release date is the 11th of January 2018 and is based on the true story of Lale and Gita Sokolov, who are survivors of Auschwitz. It begins in 1942 and we follow Lale who is a Jew who works as the tattooist between Auschwitz and Birkenau. It's in a third person perspective with occasional insight into the thoughts of Lale. I absolutely loved this book and thought it was a powerful and emotional story of survival in such an awful time. I've always found books and information to do with the Holocaust and that era very interesting because it amazes me how people could be so cruel and how horrible it must have been to have been punished for being something you can't help, whether that be your skin colour, ethnic background, religion or sexuality, it horrifies me that people were treated so cruelly but it is so inspiring to see how people survived such terrible events. Lale is such a wonderful, amazing man who uses his power as the tattooist to help others, he is truly an amazing man and Gita is also such a strong woman and they have such a powerful connection. I will say now that this book has themes of violence, bad language, sex, death and love, so it may not be suitable for younger readers, but still, it was such an amazing and interesting book. The dates are frequently mentioned throughout the book, which really gives an insight into how long Lale and Gita have had to deal with what has been thrown at them during their time in the camps and how amazing it is that they have survived so much. The hope of freedom, which is something a lot of us really do take for granted, is something that helps them get through the day, it gives them a reason to survive and wake up and do whatever they can in the hopes of being free. This story is such an emotional one that I found myself really pacing through this book, I found it so difficult to put down. The ending even contains an epilogue for what happened after the book to the real Lale and Gita and how he just wanted to get his story out there and how strong their love was. It was beautiful and inspiring and I hope others pick up this book when it is released next year. I highly recommend this, especially if you find this sort of thing fascinating.
Link provided will be active on the 4th December 2017
The review is copied from the blog post.

The story of Lale and Gita, who met at Auschwitz and survived despite the odds. Lale told his story only in his last year's after Gita had died, mainly to unburdon himself. He worried about how people would react and view the role he played as the tattooist at the camp. Truly, it is at its root a story of the lengths we go to in order to survive. As Lale said, "Choosing to live is an act of defiance, a form of heroism." The writing is basic which lets the focus remain in the story instead of the storytelling .

Wow !! An amazing , harrowing and heartbreaking true story of how human beings can find inner strength and love in the face of evil and in the most dire of circumstances!!I I I loved this book and it is a read that will stay with me for a very long time . My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my chance to read

This is the Story of 24 yr old Lale sakalov from Krompachy  who volunteered himself when it was demanded that each Jewish family hand over a child aged 18 or older to the german government, after a warning that failure to do so would result in the whole family being taken to a concentration camp.
Whilst at the camp Lale becomes ill, he  meets a french man called Pepan who works in the camp tattooing the prisoners..... he offers Lale a job working with  him to which Lale hates the thought of ... but pepan convinces him by saying if he doesnt do it someome with less soul will... one who doesnt mind hurting others.
And this is how Lale becomes the tattooist of Auschwitz.
This horrific, heartbreaking story gripped me from the first page, to the last. When i wasnt reading it, my mind kept thinking of it.  When i say it brought tears to my eyes i am not exaggerating. It was so hard reading of what was endured, but so touching reading Lale's love for Gita and how that got them both through the 3 years that they spent at the camp. I have recommended this book over and over.

What an amazing book detailing the true story of Lale and Gita making me cry as I read it. I lived in Belgium for many years and met other people who managed to survive the Holocaust - none ever wanted to talk as it was too traumatic for them to retell. This took a lot of bravery and I imagine a great deal of pain for Lale to tell this horrific story. We have all heard bits of what went on in both concentration camps and the death camps in particular Auschwitz and is sister camp Birkenhau but this book takes everything many steps further and brings the evil sadistic side into the open without describing facts that are already known. How I would have loved to meet Lale and Gita to sit and hear them talk. This book is as near as I will ever get to sense in a minuscule way what his life was like and how he was driven to survive. I think that this book should be a compulsory read by every school child the world over in an attempt to clarify the horrors of WW2.
Highly recommend this to everyone to read as it is so beautifully written, easy to read, and once began it becomes impossible to stop reading. It brings love, war atrocities and despicable horror into one book.

This might have been a straight biography, but in dealing with love that started at Auschwitz-Birkenau, perhaps it paradoxically needed the sheen of fiction to ever make us believe it.

Today on 11th November, I started a book about a tattooist in Auschwitz..I was not expecting to find the book an easy read but I was so wrong!!
I brilliantly written book that told the story of a love affair of two young people who fall in love in a concentration camp. Against all odds they survive, marry and live a happy life together.
Reading some of the things that the SS did, was hard to read but it also made me want to visit Auschwitz even more.
A book that I don't think will leave me for a long time.

When I saw this book on Goodreads, I knew I just had to read it and so I put it on my Christmas list, but was elated to find it on Netgalley that very same day, requested to read it and was accepted!

Historical books are great at giving you a glimpse into the past but NOTHING can beat the true story of someone actually in that moment in time and Nazi Germany, for me, is one of the most intriguing parts of history. I have especially read a lot about Josef Mengele (The Angel of Death) and was quite shocked to see that he was a part of Lale's story, but not shocked to see how slimey he was as a person.

When I began reading this book, I reached the stage of the first disappearance of someone Lale had become close to and was so heartbroken, but I thought it's okay, you always find out what happens to these characters. And then I remembered that I wasn't reading a normal book, I was reading a real account of war and I knew then that the chances of ever finding out what actually happened were slim. And I was right. And that was when I realised I was already completely emotionally attached to the story, and also to Lale, and I knew I was already feeling just a slight fragment of what he was going through at the time.

This was such an emotional read, so many highs of Lale and Gita and then so many lows of friends lost along the way. I can't even imagine how they felt, or how they even managed to gather the strength to survive, but I am so glad that they did, and that Lale got to tell his story.

The photos of Lale and Gita at the end are so amazing, as I had a picture of them in my head, but to actually see the characters I'd become so attached to was something else. I did have Lale spot on in my head, although perhaps more handsome in real life than I imagined, but was shocked to see Gita looking so different to how I'd been seeing her. The information gathered at the end about what happened to other people mentioned in the story was also a really nice touch, although I will forever wonder about Dana.

This heart-rending story is based on the true story of Lale Sokolov, a survivor of the Auschwitz internment camp at the end of WW2.
Lale was picked by chance to tattoo the numbers on the wrist of each of the inmates who were interned in Auchwitz by the Germans and this is the harrowing story of his survival . It is also a love story because Lale met his future wife, Gita, in the camp. Their love flourished despite the unimaginable horrors and cruelty they experienced every day.
Heather Morris has done a superb job in telling this story without excess emotion. The facts are presented without over dramatising them - the reality that these people lived through these experiences and suffered so much really makes you stop and think.
This book will stay with you for a long time.

Received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a review.

This book was rather incredible... I felt like I couldn’t possibly be reading a true story. All the things that Lale went through, had to do... they were heart-breaking and amazing all at the same time. At times it felt like it dragged on but at other times, I couldn’t put it down. I felt both happy and sad when the book was over.

A beautifully written harrowing story of one man's will to survive in Auschwitz concentration camp during the 2WW. Lale Sokolov is transported from Slovakia to Auschwitz in 1942; an educated man fluent in many languages who also happens to be a Jew. His proud bearing and individuality immediately sets him apart from his fellow detainees and when he is offered the privileged job as tatowierer "the tattooist" he readily accepts. His job is quite simply to "mark" his fellow prisoners as and when they arrive, stamping them with a 5 digit number that will forever remind them (that is those who survive) of the hell of Auschwitz. He uses his position to help and befriend where possible fellow inmates and early on in his arrival meets and falls instantly in love with a young woman called Gita.

The centre of this remarkable story is the relationship of Lale and Gita and how they managed to sustain their love whilst all around death and slaughter is the order of the day, and it seemed only a matter of time before they met the same fate. We witness firsthand the cruelty of man and the barbaric acts carried out on the weak by those who saw themselves as true followers of the Fuhrer adhering to his orders by cleansing society of undesirables. The reality was that they themselves were no better than murderers and robbers. Yet Lale's account is much more than this; it is a story of hope and endurance and a beauty that emerges when all around is painted in black. As a reader you cannot help but be affected by this account the simplicity of the story telling only adds to the poignancy of the moment the sense of dread, the unexpected and the wait for the knock when death comes calling.

Many thanks to the good people at netgalley for sending me a gratis copy in return for an honest review and that is what I have written.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris is an incredibly sad story of a young mans experience as a prisoner in the concentration camp during the holocaust. The cruelty and horrors that he went through just to stay alive were heartbreaking. This is a true story and one that will stay with me. I would like to thank NetGalley and Bonnier Zaffre for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.