I have not read the Lilac Girls, but now I want to. Ellory has built her story around the horror those 72 Polish women underwent in Ravensbruck in WWII.

https://nypost.com/2016/05/11/this-story-of-a-secret-sick-nazi-experiment-was-almost-never-told/

https://nypost.com/2016/05/08/the-women-tortured-by-nazi-doctors-and-the-american-heiress-who-saved-them/

While the Lilac Girls was about the Rabbit Girls, The Rabbit Girls is more about Miriam, daughter of Henryk Winter. Henryk is on his death bed and Miriam is caring for him. He is not lucid most of the time but begins to call his daughter, Freida. Miriam does not know anyone named Freida. She then discovers that her father has a tattoo from Auschwitz. (Little known fact: Auschwitz, including the subcamps of Birkenau and Monowitz, were the only camps that tattoed prisoners.)

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42568390

I did not expect much from this book. I was wrong. It is beautifully written and reveals a complex story bit by bit. Each chapter deals with one person in either the 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall or in WWII. Ellory takes the time leaps effortlessly.

I cannot think of any reason not to give her a 5.

Mike Lawrence