Eliza is trying to live a normal life. She’s trying to make it as a dancer but events from the past have come to disrupt not only her dream but also her relationships.

Interwoven with this is the story of Ernst. A teen at the start of WWII wrapped up in the infancy of the Hitler Youth movement. He and his brother want to belong to differing degrees of want.

Then there is Klaudia, a young girl going to school for the first time. A school where her father is a cleaner / maintenance man. Someone with a reputation, one Klaudia is keen not to be associated with. But can she keep their relationship quiet?

The three different story lines at three very different points in time made for interesting reading, especially Klaudia’s experience at school. As the three stories went on, the threads gradually came together where lives smash together and Eliza has to deal with her secret past.

The Other Me is a very different read to my previous experience of Sarginson’s writing, Identical. It was still packed with tense with characters put in awkward domestic situations not of their making. Sarginson definitely brings to the forefront the question of whether children should be held accountable for the actions of their parents.

In the mid 1980s, a young girl called Klaudia is seen seriously disliking the strict religious ideas of her parents, and how everyone at school thinks her father, who also happens to be the caretaker, was a Nazi. Well, German accents of a certain age, what else are they supposed to suspect in their naivety? Also, a few years later, Eliza shrugs off her past, and stumbles into a new relationship, although finds the fact she has had to be economical with the truth a major problem.

And yes, it is obvious very early on that Klaudia and Eliza are the same person, and that we're also going to be taken back to WW2 to see some of the background that makes life awkward for the young woman. Such is the set-up for this book, that might have been done as a thriller, but here goes for the much more languid and genre-free general fiction kind of read. I think at times the slowness of this was a handicap, but the approach allows us to see both the twists and turns of the whole plot and a lot more of the characterisation than a thriller would have been able to. Looking at the inheritance of guilt and lies and mistakes, in the way of many a book that looks back at the War, this is still a fairly distinctive example. A slow-cooking four stars, perhaps.

Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will. Enjoy

A reasonably good idea produced this book, but it was quite slow and long-winded. I didn't understand the timeline - the parents, well, mother, seems to be at an age where it is unlikely she would still have got pregnant. Putting that aside, once I had got well into the book and worked out what was happening, (a bit odd for the first few chapters), then the story became quite enjoyable and I certainly found the wartime aspect interesting. It wasn't, for me, a fantastic book, but it was certainly interesting and well written.

An interesting story, one of those stories that makes you think, it makes you wonder it's very thought provoking.
An interesting read, an enjoyable read.
I have no problems recommending this book.

A thought provoking lovely story. Would recommend to friends & family. I liked the characters and how they interacted and how they developed as the story developed.

This was an interesting read. First of all I wouldn't categorise as a psychological thriller, because it felt more general fiction about family with shades of historical, psychological drama.
Eliza has the life she's always wanted studying dance. But Eliza isn't really Eliza. Her real name is Klaudia and she's escaping from a terrible family secret that she just wants to leave behind....
This moves seamlessly between 80s London and WW2 Germany. It's a wonderful read about family secrets and shame and the effects they can have on our children.