Every time I crack open a book about this time in history, I am humbled. We must never forget it happened, even when it is so difficult to comprehend. I think it is somewhat easier to take in when written as fiction, because you can remove and protect yourself by saying "it's just a book", even when you know the horrors that happened and were part of peoples' lives and memories. I once again didn't pay attention that this was Book 2, so before jumping in I read the blurb of Book 1 and some reviews. I think this stands okay on it's own without having ready Book 1, but have no doubt the emotional impact would have been greater had I read it first. Regardless, I found this a very compelling story. I feel the author did considerably more telling than showing, but that worked just fine for me and the story.

This novel is book 2 in a series by author Roberta Kagan. It was originally released in 2016 as far as I can tell but is now being released again. I don't know if any changes have been made since it was first released.

Readers could read this story without having read the first book as there a frequent looks back to what led each character back to where they are as the novel begins. I actually felt it was a little bit too repetitive as similar details were shared more than once.

This novel continues the story of what happened to Taavi and his wife Michal after Taavi was arrested on Kristallnacht and Michal left to search for him. The reader will also meet again with Lev & Lottie who are friends as close as family. Alina and Gilde, Michal and Taavi's children also have their stories updated although after Gilde is sent to England via Kindertransport, her story basically ends (for now)

Both Michal and Taavi faced incredible hardships after their captures. There are descriptions of how severe winters were for prisoners to the point where fingers and toes could easily fall off. I have not read that kind of detail in any other novel.

As a reader I can only imagine the desperation this family felt as they were separated from each other and had no control over when or where or even if, they would meet again. The author brings to light how heart breaking this was and sadly still is in too many countries currently at war. War is never good and happy endings are few and far between - even in this novel. Not all will survive. I found the ending of the novel was rather abrupt though I suspect more details will come with the third book in the series.

Many thanks to #NetGalley and The Book Whisperer for allowing me to read an advance copy and provide an unbiased review.

Another great addition to the series of Michal's Destiny and an emotional read that goes straight to the heart. War, desperate times and measures, a life that is hard and full of struggles. This is a story of a family shattered but what is happening around them and is a story that is not for the faint hearted. But what a great read it is and it really brings to life the struggles, strength and courage of the people who dealt with and lived through these horrible wars of the past.

This book is wonderful in the way it is written, the way it portrays the characters and it the way it can really get to your heart and your head. It is a book I could not put down even though it can be hard to read, in teh the subject matter is so intense. I highly recommend this book and I look forward to reading the next book in this series.

Thank you NetGalley and Book Whisperer for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

ARC Review ✨️

♡Tavvi & Michal♡

This story amazed me. I loved everything about it. It was so heartfelt and emotional. The author had a way of making the characters seem so real. I ended up connecting with them a lot. The story starts in 1938 and circulates around the war. I love historical fiction, and this author nailed it! I can't wait to dive into book three.

Thanks so much to the author, The Book Whisperer, and Netgalley for the ARC!

This is book two in the Michal's Destiny series. I had thought Michal's Destiny was an emotional read. I had thought I had cried all the tears. I had thought my disgust would not grow. I was wrong, so very wrong.

Michal's family has been broken apart. Taavi had tried to save his daughter's boyfriend during the Night of Broken Glass. They both paid the price. This book will take you through his struggles in a work camp after Taavi was taken away that night. You will feel his desperation to get back to his family. His life, although not really living, is a reminder of what happened.

The night Taavi went away, Michal went in search for her husband. For her, history repeats itself in many ways. If I thought her life could not get worse, I was wrong. Michal will know great suffering. She experienced horrors beyond imagination, but she never forgot her family.

A Family Shattered explores what it was like for many. Desperate times cause desperate measures. Following Michal's family touches on the suffering and the horrors of World War Two. The story is not an easy read, yet I found my self so engrossed that I couldn't close the book. I wanted to know what would be happening next. I wanted to see their strength and determination. My stomache is turning. My heart is breaking over what this story has shown.

Forget shattered family, your heart will likely be shattered after reading this one. There are a lot of players and we get a front row seat to all of their trials, their thoughts, their challenges, their wins...and their defeats. Heart-wrenching and challenging to read, but no less important. Great for anyone who wants a read to break their heart. Not good for people who want everyone to have a happily ever after.

A Family Shattered by Roberta is the second in the evocative Michal's Destiny series. I do prefer it to the first book as the story grabbed me around the throat in a good way. Kagan is an auto-read author for me.

Kristellnacht in Berlin in World War II is torment for so many, especially the Jews whose only crime is their ethnicity and religion. Nazis torture, taunt, rape, maim and kill without compunction. One murder victim's father-in-law Tavvi desperately tries to help but he's dragged off to a work/murder camp. His wife, Michal, inquiries about him at the police station but the police are powerful and ruthless so she is forced to Ravensbrück. Meanwhile, one of their daughters is with friends an the other sent to Britain. Layers of horror are Michal's new "life". What she endures is nightmarish and agonizing, so many reasons to want to die, but she befriends a woman who encourages her. Insipid food descriptions, medical experiments, lice, nakedness, physical labour, freezing and murder were the Nazis' idea of sport at Auschwitz, too. Greed and power are strong motivators and millions suffered for it. Michal and Tavvi were out of their minds wondering where the other was and were willing to resort to anything to find out.

This time the author includes perspectives from camp guards which intrigued me. The story is harrowing and heart crushing in its brutality and parts are gritty and graphic. I don't need a book to end neatly and prettily. But some thoughts and ideas were repeated a few times which is unnecessary.

My sincere thank you to Book Whisperer and NetGalley for providing me with an early digital copy of this engrossing novel.

I really enjoyed reading about the different characters and their lives through the Second World War. I found I couldn’t put the book down as I wanted to find out what was going to happening to the family.

The book picks up right where the 1st book in the series, Michal's Destiny, left off

At the beginning of the story, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between Michal/Avram/Taavi and Alina/Benny/Johan.

Beautiful story, but I felt as though some of it was far-fetched. Many, many chapters in a row of the book focused solely on Alina, and I found myself missing reading about what was happening with the other characters. The author does do a decent job touching on each of the characters, with the exception of Gilde. I would really like to know what became of her once she was sent away.

As with Michal's Destiny, the book ended with a somewhat abrupt cliffhanger.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion/review

After reading book one of this series which was awful I will not read another book. Unfortunately, I felt the book was so poorly written. There were multiple point of view changes which made it feel poorly written. There is all narrative and very little dialog. What dialog there is is labored. There is little connection between incidents. Some events are over explained. The author obviously has a story to share it just wasn’t executed well at all. On top of that the story ends abruptly and there is no way to find out what happens unless you read the next book. I don’t necessarily like having an author forcing the reader into the next story or just give up.

I would like to thank Book Whisper and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. n this series.

A republished novel, I realized I had read #AFamilyShattered before soon after beginning it. However, since I have to review it, I completed it. Set in Germany during the Holocaust, the novel is sombre and can be depressing because it plumbs the depths of human depravity.

Opening on Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass on 9 Nov 1938 when Jewish businesses and homes throughout Berlin were systematically attacked , raided, destroyed and Jews beaten, murdered, imprisoned, herded into trucks, and women gang-raped. The story begins with the experiences of a Jewish family of Kristallnacht. The Margolises saw their eldest daughter’s fiancé murdered right at their doorstep, Tavvi Margolis who rushes to secure his daughter and her fiancé is beaten and herded off to prison for being a Jew.

The next day, his wife, beautiful Michal goes to the police station to enquire about her husband and never returns.

The children, 18-year-old Alina and young Gilde are taken in by family friends, Lev and Lotti. Gilde goes to UK in the first kinder transport. The story follows events that overtake Alina, her parents and Lev and Lotti and a few other characters.

Ms.Kagan graphically illustrates the dark world of the concentration camps, the inhumane, sadistic cruelty the Jews and other “undesirables” of Hitlerian hatred faced day in and day out, not just in the camps but even in every day life, simply because of their ethnicity, political and religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or just because they openly opposed Hitler. Of them all, the Jews faced the worst ire as Untermenschen or sub-human. Kagan hints at the darker world of medical experiments on these poor souls in the camps.

It looks like all that was dirty, dark, infinitely cruel, sadistic, mean, hateful, amoral, lacking common decency… crawled out from under every rock during this time in history, since those characteristics were being glorified and lauded as acceptable. Kindness, decency and humanity seems to have all but disappeared in Nazi Germany.

The books presents a dark and depressing view of life in Germany and elsewhere during the war. Amorality seems to rule the day, but in doing so, it overlooks the many Germans who unsuccessfully fought against Hitler; decent men, women and children who went out of their way to help those persecuted without thought for themselves or for their safety or expecting anything in return. Moments even in the concentration camps of decency and humanity and kindness. However, Roberta Kagan seems to reduce most everything to the trading of sexual favours.

For me, her descriptions were rather too graphic and it turned me off. I’ve read several other novelists of this period, who included life in the concentration camps in their novels but who are not as graphic, and still manage to convey the horrors of the Hitlerian regime very well.

Unless you have a taste for literature of the seamy side of life painted too vividly, skip the book. There are others that will satisfy your curiosity and give you an understanding of life then, without needlessly titillating the darker side of human nature.

My thanks to @NetGalley and the publisher @BookWhisperer for the ARC copy made available for the review. The opinions expressed are my own.

#AFamilyShattered #NetGalley.

Michal and Taavi’s story continues as they rediscover their love and grow their family. Life is good, but grows more difficult as Nazi Germany’s distrust and hatred of Jews overtakes the country. Their 2 daughters are growing up, and Michal and Taavi will do anything to keep them safe. When Taavi’s daughter Alina’s fiancée is slaughtered right outside their house, everything drastically changes in an instant. The family is splintered, and all are separated. W

Now Alina is an adult, and she makes it to America, where life continues to be difficult for her. She marries an abusive man, then realizes she needs to make her own future. Her choices are unpleasant, but make her wealthy. But at what cost?

Kagan gives her readers a terrifying glimpse of the reality of being a Jew in Nazi Germany. What happens to Michal and Taavi? Heartbreaking, realistic, and cruel, this is a story that grips you to the end.

A Family Shattered.

I love all the characters and the love, betrayal and sacrifice which carries on in book 2. This book is the suspense and emotions of how much the family members will endure to survive for love in the hope to see each other again. It is an immensely powerful and beautifully written book as the story of Taavi and Michal incarceration and their two children who have no idea what has happened to their parents where they are and move in with their parent's friends as the war rages. A very engaging and emotional book and I cannot wait for the next book in this series by Roberta Kagan. Thanks to NetGalley and to the publishers of this book for giving me a free advance copy of the book to preview and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

A Family Shattered by Roberta Kagan is the second book in the series Michal's Destiny. I just finished reading Michal's Destiny and since the book left me with so many unanswered questions, I felt I needed to read this one right to see what happened next. The book is more or less a continuation of Michal's and Tavvi's life during the Nazi regime in Germany. Being German Jews, the family's lives were in danger and they needed to do what they can to survive, Their daughter Alina was able to escape to America. She wound up marring twice, one resulting in death and the other was abusive. It goes into detail of how she was able to support herself after leaving her abusive husband and bring up her son Joseph alone. She has no idea what happened to her mother and father who were still in Germany, her sister Glide who was sent on one of the first transports to Britian, or their family's closest friends Lotti and Levi.

This book did not hold my interest as much as the first one. I felt that it was very wordy and found myself skipping sections that kept going on. It did eventually tell us what happened to the original characters Michal, Tavvi, Lotti and Levi during this terrible time in history, but those parts were brief. This book, as well as the first, did not have a finite ending, letting us know that there is more to come.

I would like to thank Net Galley for giving me the opportunity to read this pre-release.

I loved this book. Very much different than her previous books whereby the author explores a family dealing with the war when they escape to America. Great characters and wonderful storyline. One thing I love about her books is I learn something new about the war and the people who experienced it first hand. I am excited for the next book. One of my favorite authors! Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book left me completely devastated and hopeless I nearly cried at work. That's on me for reading a series about the Holocaust right now of all times. Like with the first book, it was mostly tell and little show with the characters emotions and actions, and there did seem to be inconsistencies with the timings. The whole thing was crazy fast paced - it covered the majority of the Holocaust (1938-1945) in under 300 pages so it did make it hard to connect BUT I was so gripped the whole time anyway and now I think I have to finish the series because I haveeee to find out if the sisters are reunited (they'd better be).
Review also on goodreads & storygraph.

A Family Shattered by Roberta Kagan

I enjoyed reading book two of Roberta Kagan’s serious Michal’s Destiny.

In this book we find out what happens to Michal, Taavi, Alina, Lotti and Lev during the war. I hope book three will let us know what happens to Gilde after she left for England on the children’s Transports in 1938 as we didn’t in this book.

I would like to thank Net Galley and Book Whisperer for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

WWII is one of my favorite genres to read. I became invested in the characters of the book; their lives were messy, convoluted, and much love was shared. The characters were flawed and easy to relate to.

Thanks net galley for the second boom in this series, I read the first one and hope I get the opportunity to read the third book.
It’s Berlin 1938 the Nazis are in control of the country, and all Jews were in danger of their lives.
Michal and Tavvi after a separation were back together with their two daughters, but life was changing in Berlin.
Tavvi had been arrested after the night of the Kristallnacht, and Michal left her daughters to find out where he was.
Not knowing what was going to happen to her and her family.
Life from then on was horrendous for Michal her husband and her two daughters, and for every Jew living in Berlin.

I will preface this by saying that WW2 historical fiction is one of my favourite genres and I’ve read many books that I’ve loved. Unfortunately, this was not one of them.

The story itself had potential. It really did show the terrible struggles faced by people, particularly Jewish people, during WW2. However, I felt the ending of the book was a bit abrupt and we never got to know the outcome for a few of the characters in the book.

I did not enjoy the writing style at all. The sentences felt choppy. There was also too much repetition for me. For example, you’d learn something about a character in one chapter and then in the next chapter about that same character that same fact would be said again. It felt redundant to me and took away from the experience. I much prefer a show don’t tell type of reading experience.