The tragic story of two young lesbians and their circle of queer friends in 1930s Berlin during the rise of Nazi powers, GMLTB is a heartbreaking but timely book that mirrors many of the frightening things that are once again happening in the world today.

I found this book to give me a lot of dread, especially when I could clearly see the comparisons between now and then in terms of what's happening to queer community around the world. There were genuinely several moments where I had to pause and put the book down for a moment, just to catch my breath over the sheer fear of Tillie and Ruth’s world closing in around them.

It’s a beautiful concept, and since I’m very interested in 20th century historical fiction, I thought it would be an interesting read. However, there were bits and pieces which did make my experience with this book less enjoyable.

Firstly, there were a lot of American slangs, names, and anachronisms, which seemed a bit out of place for 30s Germany. The characterization of the main cast I found to be particularly flat, and could’ve been interchangeable to me even if everyone had swapped names. I think the only characters who slightly were differentiated were, of course, Tillie and Ruth.

Speaking of Tillie, several of her choices left me quite confused. Although she works as a secretary for the Nazis and has all the information there at her disposal, she doesn’t actively seek out resistance, or manages to do much with this information. It takes a complete outsider and third-party activity to bring her in touch with them. I just feel like she could’ve searched for them somehow at first.

I often felt like the rest of the characters, especially Tillie’s circle of friends, felt like props rather than fleshed out characters.

Finally, we come to the formatting and prose. The formatting for the dialogue is a little out of place, and it was quite hard to figure out who was talking to who since sometimes Character A would be speaking but the dialogue tag would point to what Character B was doing instead. The dialogue itself felt stilted and too wordy, with the run-on sentences being slightly too long.

Despite that, there were several moments that stood out for me: the little callbacks to the fate of certain characters due in 90s sections, the bait-and-switch concerning several characters, which all were a pleasant surprise.

All in all, GMLTB shines a light on a lesser-explored path of queer history in fiction, which I think is an interesting take.

Thank you to Amphorae and Netgalley for providing this ARC for an honest review!

I really liked the overall premise of this book: a love story of two women right before world war 2 and then in the 90s, of a granddaughter trying to figure out her grandmother’s story. The ending was soo beautiful and tear-wrenching. It was really heartbreaking to hear the stories of trans women in 1930s Germany and how Berlin went from such a gay/trans centre to crumbling.
Throughout the story however there was a bit that threw me.
- the main character is cis, white, German, and works for the Nazis, and tells her Nazi dad that she’s queer and stands up to these terrifying Nazi leaders - which would have been really unlikely imo
- the book said that Nazi’s hate queers more than they hate Jews which…?? I don’t think so. Also why was everyone not more worried for Ruth ??
- zippers?
- modern phrases and talking - sooo much of this. I’m not sure if the American/modern talking was to draw more parallels between 1930s Germany and America ? If so, I get that. It just felt really out of place and pulled me out of the story a lot.

4.25 stars!
thank you netgalley & Amphorae Publishing Group for access to an early readers edition of this book.

can i just start by saying that this is such an incredible debut novel!! i've read many historical fiction novels especially set during ww2 and i haven't read a book about the sufferings the lgbtqia+ community went through. it was truly eye opening to read about and i learnt so much about the changes in berlin during the 20-40s, i knew this community was targeted, but i was so unaware of the extent that those in berlin specifically were attacked.

tillie's storyline was so interesting, working in her fathers law firm and seeing the growth of the nazi party through her eyes was some of my favourite parts!

i did feel that there were a lots of characters introduced at once and it did take me a while to get my head wrapped around them all, and remember who was who. but other than that this story was beautifully told & written.

I enjoyed this book and I hope other folks will too.

What the book is:
🔘 A love story and fictional retelling of a part of queer history as Hitler came to power in Germany. There is so much love in this book and while I enjoyed the found family and the MC love story, I was surprised by how much the love of city/home and the desire to fight for their place impacted me.
🔘 A dual timeline story that alternates between the 1990s (USA) and the late 1920s to late 1930s (Germany). The book begins in 1927 with Tillie, her partner Ruth, and their group of queer friends in Berlin. It follows their struggles as their city transforms from a place that was accepting of them to a place that they fear. In the 1990s, Thea's grandmother's health is declining due to her dementia and along with her remaining family Thea has made the difficult decision to move her to a memory care facility. In that process Thea uncovers a hidden part of her grandmother's past that leads her to try and connect the pieces that her grandmother's memory has either lost or suppressed.
🔘 A well researched and creative narrative that connects some of the worst names from Nazi Germany to the fictional characters and an ending that gave me the Queer Notebook feels I didn't realize I was missing from my life.
🔘 There are some reviews that quote the authors use of "Make Germany Great Again" and I want to be clear that the author does not use it as a Hitler campaign slogan in order to make a connection to present day. There are times when Nazi supporting characters will say something like, Hitler is going to make Germany great again, which is historically accurate, as Hitler absolutely did say these words. The only parallel that should be drawn to the author using this phrase and the current US president is that both men see/saw themselves as the only ones capable of restoring said greatness.

Give My Love to Berlin by Katherine Bryant has an intriguing premise and a setting rich with historical potential, but unfortunately, I found the slow start difficult to push through. While Bryant’s writing is thoughtful and the well constructed, the early chapters lacked the momentum and emotional pull I was hoping for. The pacing made it hard to stay engaged, and as a result, I didn’t finish the book. That said, readers who enjoy a more gradual build-up and immersive detail may find it worth sticking with. It simply wasn’t the right fit for me.

never has a book affected me so much that i genuinely struggled to begin a review. i was an absolutely wreck by the end of this book, and i couldn’t put it down from start to finish. i am sure it is no surprise to anyone that this would happen given the books setting, but trust me when i say this book will blow you away and rip out your heart simultaneously it is absolutely a must read.

there is just something about reading of LGBT+ people finding love and belonging even in the worst of times and in the face of adversity fills me with such warmth and hope especially when it sometimes feels like not much has changed for us in all this time.

without doubt - you will learn, love and cry through this book. it is a true love letter to those who came before us.

5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Give my Love to Berlin is a testament to a less-discussed victim group of the Holocaust: queer people. This book not only brings the story of these people to light in a way that will hopefully be more digestible than the sometimes dense history books written on the same subject, but the additional storyline follow Thea in the 1990s as she uncovers her grandmother's past show why, even after surviving the Nazis, the history has remained buried due to the continued hostility against queer people.

I really enjoyed this book. As a queer person with an MA in Holocaust Studies, this history is familiar to me. I know of Hirschfield and the Institute and Paragraph 175. That background is what initially drew me to the book and then I stayed to follow the tense journeys of Tillie, Ruth, James, and Ernesto, and Thea's investigation of her family past. The addition of Thea's storyline since in the 1990s, as mentioned above, was a really great addition to the story. Putting the story of survival and escape parallel to the story of uncovering and remembering really encapsulates a holistic experience of the Holocaust, dealing with both the lived reality and then the knowledge keeping.

I was occasionally a little uncomfortable with the way the characters posed the threat to queer people vs the threat to Jewish people. Lines like "they hate the Jews, but they hate you more" had me cringing a bit. I think this was to capture the sort of staged approach the Nazis took towards who these escalated violence against at any given time. It was a staggered approach, with political dissidents (Communists especially) were targeted first followed by queer people and then disabled people and so on and so forth down their list of 'enemies'. Of course, these often overlapped and as a new victim group was targeted, the previous weren't ignored. However, Jewish people remained a target of the Nazis throughout their time, with the violence escalating overtime. So I'm pretty sure Bryant was trying to capture the shifting tides of focused hatred, but it made me a little uncomfortable. I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS ANTISEMITISM. DO NOT REVIEW BOMB THIS BOOK BECAUSE OF THAT.

This was also an incredibly timely read, given the situation in the US and the targeting of trans and queer individuals. This book was very evidentially written to evoke Trump and Trump's America which made the book hard to read just from an emotional standpoint. The parallels are often subtle, but the repeated invocation of "Make Germany Great Again" drives it home.

Over all, this was a good book that I would recommend, especially to those looking to explore this history for the first time. I feel like this can serve as a good jumping off point towards people learning more about queer people during the Holocaust.

Thank you to NetGalley and Walrus Publishing for this eARC. I'm rating it 1.5*.

Review summary:
I am so disappointed by this book. Amazing concept, but dull writing style, poor character development, zero atmosphere, and not great handling of queer and trans characters. Plus, it's full of anachronisms and didn't feel at all like 1920s/1930s Germany — even the character names are often not German. As a European reader, the whole book felt incredibly American.

Detailed review:
This is a historical novel set in two time periods: the US in the 1990s, and Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s. The main story is in the '20s-'30s, and the main character is a cis woman with Nazi parents, a secret Jewish girlfriend who likes to wear suits, and a circle of friends made up of gay men and trans women. She has two jobs: one, as a secretary for the Nazis. Two, in the Institute for Sexual Science, which focuses on research and support for LGBTQ+ people.

As I said, great concept. But then we get onto the issues with the book. In no particular order:

The beginning is really dull. It feels like the author is relying on the combination of the time period and emotionally painful things to hook you instead of the characters. In fact, even when I reached the 50% mark of the book, I still couldn't have told you any of the main characters' personality traits or defining characteristics beyond their sexuality and their jobs. Especially in the sections set in the 1990s, I need more than "my grandmother needs to go to a nursing home" to be invested in a POV character or a storyline — I need a personality. I need to know who this character is.

Not all of the time, but a significant amount of the time, it also feels like the book is writing about queer people instead of being for queer people. The author is LGBTQ+, but even so, a lot of it felt like how my straight relatives view us LGBTQ+ people. On the one hand, I think that can be partly explained by the 2D characters — characters remain queer archetypes rather than developed characters. But on the other hand, I was shocked by the fact that that when someone's gender isn't obvious, the book uses the pronoun "it" instead of "them". How did such a transphobic, dehumanising phrase end up in a book marketed as LGBTQ+? (I'm aware that ARCs aren't always the final version and I will be messaging the publisher about this, so I really hope it gets edited out of the book before publication.)

Even these archetypes don't always make sense. Early on in the book, the main POV character is sexually assaulted by Nazis. Her and her girlfriend pretended to have boyfriends to try to escape them, but it wasn't enough. The next day, at work, not only is the character seemingly unaffected by the assault but she asks her trans colleagues and friends, who are unable to pass, why they feel unsafe travelling alone. It makes no sense. This same character is also on multiple occasions shown as being embarrassed or made uncomfortable by discussions about her trans colleagues' transitions and pasts as sex workers. While transphobia is present within queer communities, these interactions feel inauthentic within the context of the story.

Going back to the topic of the main POV character being assaulted, she is frequently harassed and sexually assaulted and made to need rescuing despite being the most privileged and able to pass of all the main characters. It's a weird position for the novel to take. As a reader, I'm far more concerned about her friends who can't pass, but the book sidelines them; most of the time, their harassment is referred to only in throwaway remarks. And this is even more frustrating because the main POV character is one of the most complicit in what's going on — she works for Nazis. She attends Nazi business meetings and house parties, she organises Nazi parades, she files information about concentration camps and doesn't even accidentally-on-purpose lose important documents. (In fact, the characters tell the doctor who advocated for and operated on trans women —an actual historical character — that he should be ashamed of not being able to arrange for trans women to safely leave Germany, while also telling the Nazi employee protagonist that she shouldn't feel bad about working to help the Nazi party come to power.)

When atrocities happen in the book, I personally felt the way the author handled it robbed dignity from victims, especially ones that were real historical figures. This is subjective, of course; other readers may diagree.

At the same time, some of the sexual assaults in the book felt gratuitous.

The writing is also dull. Occasionally the writer has a wonderful paragraph, but in general, the sentences aren't engaging, information is awkwardly given, and although this might sound strange, there's too much of the basic mechanics of body movement included — I don't need to know that a character stood up and walked over and poured coffee and sat back down again. The explain-every-step approach slows things down a lot.

On top of that, there are a lot of punctuation and dialogue tag mistakes. It's often unclear who's speaking because of this — on a grammatical level, it should be person A, but based on the content of the dialogue, it should be person B. German titles are at times misspelt, e g. "Krieslieter" instead of "Kreislieter" (District Leader).

Nothing really felt German, let alone 1920s Berlin, beyond the Nazis, the Institute for Sexual Science, and the occasional German title. In fact, many of the names aren't German at all, even among the blond Nazis. Characters in 1920s Germany say things like "Hiya!", "Hey you guys!", "I know, buddy" and "Okay, well,...".
And there are multiple references to "make/made Germany great again".

Characters fiddle with the zippers on their sweaters in the 1920s, despite that not being a thing in Germany in the 20s. Politically aware caracters talk about how they didn't bother to vote in elections even though the actual voter turnout was over 75%. German lovers write to each other in English in the 1930s and '40s. Oh, and the Wall Street Crash apparently happened in Dec 1929 in this book, even though in real life it occurred in October 1929.

Having recently learned of Dr. Hirschfeld and the wonderful queer jewish history behind him I am obsessed with this fictionalisation. This is ultimately a safe haven for all the LGBTQ+ it also features the icon Dora Richter and a wonderful found family that forms around her.

Intertwining to generations we follow Thea trying to find her families histories, and her grandmas younger adult years among the rise of the Nazis surrounded by queer unity and found family. This does a wonderful job of minority representation, even within such a harrowing fiction that reflects real life people in history.

I almost sobbed reading this, it does a wonderful job of commemorating such a tragic history into a phenomenal fiction. Despite how dark it can be we see so many beautiful and passionate relationships survive and flourish through the struggles. Grief is distinct through both disabling health issues and loss but is handled amazingly as well as what can be triggering content.

Overall, this is a new historical fiction fave for me, and one id direct anyone wanting LGBTQ+ and Jewish representation to.

5 ⭐️ Thank you to Amphorae Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book right here is why I read. I have not felt this moved by a book in years and it came in and knocked me off my feet. Mark my words this book will be on a best sellers list.

Book Summary: this is a historical novel set in two time periods: the US in the 1990s and Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s. Berlin was well known as the gay capital of the world due to new research and medical advances offered by Dr. Hirschfeld. The story touches on topics regarding, love, war-time, nazi reign, religion, and the impact on the queer population.

Katherine Bryant’s goal with this book was to express gratitude to all queer humans who came before her, who laid the path, not just in her liberation, but the liberation of us all. She is 100% right in that our queer ancestors deserve their stories told and she did just that.

I look forward to what this author has in store for the future!

Katherine Bryant’s Give My Love to Berlin is a stunning debut. While the opening chapters take their time setting the scene, I became completely hooked once I reached the 20% mark. The novel beautifully illuminates a lesser-known piece of queer history: the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin. I had no idea about its significance, and Bryant brings it to life with such care and depth.

What struck me most was the way the characters love fiercely in ways that feel both deeply personal and profoundly universal. There is a tenderness in their connections, a reminder that queer people have always existed, always found each other, and always loved in our own beautiful, unique ways.

Book Review: Give My Love to Berlin
Rating: 4/5

Give My Love to Berlin is a compelling historical fiction novel that brings the city’s past to life with rich storytelling and well-researched detail. The book does an excellent job of immersing readers in Berlin’s history, capturing both its beauty and its struggles through the eyes of its characters.

One of the novel’s strongest aspects is its representation. The characters feel authentic, and their diverse perspectives add depth to the historical narrative. The author weaves personal stories with larger historical events in a way that feels natural and engaging, making the book both informative and emotionally resonant.

The cover, premise, and writing style are neat. They drew me in and kept me curious, but I am realizing I am not a fan of historical fiction. It is also really difficult for me to read about Hitler currently. This is an important book and I will definitely purchase it once I have the funds and save it for a day when i am in the mood for a read like this, but this is just not for me.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide honest feedback voluntarily. I received an eARC.

A sapphic love story set in Hitler-era Germany—this book had all the elements to pull me in as a historical fiction fan. The premise is compelling, the writing is well done, and I can see why many readers would love it.

But if I’m being honest? It was hard for me to get into. Not because it isn’t a good book, but because it just wasn’t for me. Sometimes, a book can be beautifully written and still not connect in the way you hope.

If you love historical fiction with a poignant, forbidden love story at its core, this might be exactly what you’re looking for. It just didn’t quite land for me.

Oh my God, this is one of the best book I will ever read in my entire life! I didn’t obsess with a book since Evelyn Hugo. This novel is so intense (the romances, the friendships, the mystery, the perils of nazism, the History…). I love it. Really, I just love it.
I don’t have an heart anymore or tears anymore, but I cannot stop thinking about this wonderful, wonderful book!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

started this immediately and got 30% in but i think im going to have to dnf for now- this is only a soft dnf, i simply don’t think i’m in the mood for this kind of story! for now, i was disconnected from the writing but i would like to attempt it again with a different mindset 💫