Adiel and The Führer

Elyse Hoffman

Book Info

Genre: Historical Fiction, German historical fiction

Length: 342 pages

Published: 20 April 2024

SYNOPSIS

Adiel Goldstein has a good life. Despite the anti-Semitism he faces as a German Jew, he has everything he wants. A dream job as an art professor, good friends, a loving father, and a precious nine-year-old daughter, Kaia. But his life is about to be upended. An old comrade from his time fighting in the Great War is gaining power: a man named Hitler. Adiel’s father insists that they need to leave the country before Hitler becomes the leader of Germany.

Adiel and his family plan to move to America, but before they can even pack their bags, he and Kaia make a shocking discovery. Adiel’s father, Natan Goldstein, is from the future. A Holocaust survivor who lost his family to unspeakable tragedy, Natan was given the chance to go back in time and take the life of Adolf Hitler. But when he failed to kill the future Führer, he devoted himself to his new family and awaited the inevitable.

Natan can’t face the Holocaust again, but Adiel’s unique connection to Hitler means he might be able to succeed where his father failed. Adiel now has a choice: escape as planned and let history repeat itself, or sacrifice everything to stop the Holocaust before it can begin.

Award winning author Elyse Hoffman has crafted a thought-provoking and daring work of historical fiction which will tug at your heartstrings.

MY REVIEW

A thought provoking alternate history is explored in this book which tugged at my heart strings!

If you had the chance to travel back in time, where would you go and what would you do? When holocaust survivors Becca and Natan find themselves in this situation they decide to travel back in time and kill baby Hitler. There will be no war. No death camps. Their friends and family will not have been murdered. The thing is, it is a one way journey and they must live their lives going forward in this alternate timeline.

The author looks at nature v nurture and the affect upbringing has on a child when they are an adult.

The star of the book for me was little Kaia who was forever positive and happy, no matter what life threw at her. Following the premise of a Charlie Chaplin film she comes up with a crazy solution to get to the ‘second Hitler’. Operation Chaplin. But it might just work!

I was absolutely sold on this book from the synopsis and I couldn’t have enjoyed it more. The writing pulled me in completely. Many of the German characters in the book are real people who were close to Hitler, and have been written as authentically as possible.

It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t when you read it. I haven’t included too much of the plot in my review so as not to ruin it.

All I can say to sum up is I highly recommend it, and I will be reading the others in this series…as well as the next one.

Huge thanks to The Write Reads for my spot on the blog tour.

About the Author

Elyse Hoffman is an award-winning author who strives to tell historical tales with new twists. Having studied WWII since the age of thirteen and with interests in fantasy and Jewish folklore, she loves to combine them in her writing. Elyse started writing novels at fourteen and finished her first historical fiction work at fifteen. She has published eight books: five in a series called The Barracks of the Holocaust, and three novels, including The Book of Uriel, Where David Threw Stones, and Fracture. In her spare time, she loves to read, work on pretty keyboards, and hang out with her co-authors – her Goldendoodle Ari and her ex-feral cat, Echo.