world war two historical fiction book recommendations!

everyone it's haley and today i'm going to be talking about my top historical fiction reads specifically those that are set during world war ii [Music] i'm really excited to be doing this video today because i've been wanting to do a historical fiction recommendations video for a very long time now but i just haven't really gotten the chance to do so and i also wasn't sure exactly how i wanted to split it up because i have a lot of world war ii ones but i also have a lot from different periods of history so this is going to be at least a two-part video possibly a three-part video because i love historical fiction it's one of my favorite genres i have so many of my all-time favorite books are from the genre there's just something about it that really speaks to me i find that historical fiction books are generally the ones that leave me thinking afterwards for the longest they leave the biggest impact on me so i'm very excited to share some of my favorites with you guys today i definitely will have another video coming out soon with some more recommendations i'm not sure how i'm going to split up the last two parts of it exactly but today we're going to start off with world war ii because there are quite a few that seems to be a pretty popular topic as far as historical fiction goes and it is a time period that i also find pretty fascinating i just wanted to take a second to talk about the sponsor for today's video and it is such a cool sponsor so today's video is sponsored by hunter killer and they create these really cool murder mystery games and this one in particular is agatha christie theme these games aren't just any murder mystery game though they are an immersive experience and this is actually a collector's edition item right here like i am so shook by how cool this is in this case it is inspired by one of her short stories the mystery of hunter's lodge this collector's edition is amazing because they actually partnered with the agatha christie 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because this is so high quality this is such a great gift for any agatha christie fan like it's an experience it's not just like getting a book or whatever you're getting something so much more than that this is actually a pre-sale but they will start shipping early december so it's not like that far away i honestly had so much fun doing this i found it so hard because i'm really not good at puzzles but like it was a blast and i was just extremely impressed when i opened this up and saw all the evidence and everything and it just was so much fun for any kind of like if you like solving mysteries i just it got my brain going which was really nice so right now if you guys were interested you can click the link in my description box down below and get ten dollars off of this collector's edition game so you too can get the opportunity to solve the mystery of hunter's lodge this is super cool whether it's for yourself or a gift it's awesome honestly and i highly recommend that you check it out so thank you so much to hunterkiller for sponsoring today's video so the first book that i want to talk about is one that i'm sure you guys knew was going to show up on this list because it is one of my favorite books of all time and that is the book thief by marcus zuzak so this isn't a book that's for everyone but it is one that i think if you're going to love it you're really going to love it like it just left such an impact on me it's such an incredible incredible story and it is set obviously during world war ii and it follows a young girl in germany and she started trying to steal books that are being burnt because obviously this is a time when books are being burnt books are very important and she starts stealing them and trying to read them so it's also the one thing that i think sets this book apart from others is the fact that it's narrated by death and that's i think the point where people either love it or they hate it but i loved that i found the narration to be incredibly powerful and everything about the book was really well thought out i think this book is a complete masterpiece and deserves all the hype that it gets i absolutely adore it obviously but it's definitely one that is going to leave you very sad i mean all of these books really will but oh my goodness did this book like touch my heart and completely break me into a million pieces but honestly in the best possible way it is fantastic and if you can get past the fact that it's narrated by death just because i know that like that's not for everyone i loved that part but it's not for everyone but if you can get past that then i think you will really love this book and see how impactful it is next up is the nightingale by kristin hannah so this is an adult book and there's actually supposed to be an adaptation of this i'm not sure when it's supposed to come out i know that they've cast people in it now but it's just taken a really long time to be in production and i'm sure covet hasn't helped but either way this is a fantastic and beautiful like just oh my goodness amazing historical fiction i had heard so much about this book when i was working at the bookstore i remember this book had come out kind of recently to that and i had seen it around and then everyone was talking about it at work and i was like there's no way that this book can be as good as people are saying it is but it really really was i distinctly remember listening to this audiobook and just starting to cry because i was so touched by the story so this follows two sisters who are living in nazi occupied france you follow them throughout time as they are dealing with the occupation how it's changed their lives and there's also like jumping back to present day so you get a really well-rounded picture of everything and it's just like it's heartbreaking i'm gonna say that a million times about all of these books but i feel like those heartbreaking books are the ones that leave me with the most impact i guess i don't think that was a really good sentence but you know what i mean so i highly recommend this book if you are looking for an adult historical fiction this is a great one to go with do be aware that there are some triggers associated with it so if that might be an issue for you then definitely look into that before reading it but i don't think you'll regret having read this book to me it's one of the few books that not only lives up to the hype surrounding it but surpasses that i feel like there are a few authors in particular that tend to write historical fictions and i turn to them all the time when i'm looking for something new and one of those authors is ruta sepetys she also has some books that aren't focused in the world war two time period but these are the two that are set during this time period i have read not all of her books i think there's one that i still need to read but i've really enjoyed everything by her so here i have salt to the sea and between shades of gray so salt to the sea is set in germany and it follows a bunch of different characters who are all fleeing at the end of the war and actually is it said in germany i don't remember but it follows four characters who are all coming from different places they all have different tragic background stories from this war and they are fleeing as the germans are invading that's why i'm not sure if it's set in germany or if like the germans are just advancing but basically it follows i don't like i don't want to say too much because i don't want to spoil things but it follows a not really talked about disaster and it does so in a way that is incredible like you will just feel for all these characters all the different backgrounds that they have and then as they come together they all have fascinating backstories and you just like it's going to once again break your heart but like in the best possible way in my opinion and then for between shades of gray this is set in lithuania in 1941 i mean it starts in lithuania but it follows characters who are lithuanian and they are captured by the soviets and they are brought to siberia to these camps where they are living in absolutely horrible conditions and you're following a girl who is fighting for her life fighting to survive her family is fighting to survive it's just horrible horrible conditions that these people are in and it's a girl who's really trying to keep hope and just make it through such a difficult situation so it really was something i didn't know about i didn't know that much about the russian side of history so it was very interesting and taught me a lot as did salt of the sea i feel like brutus pettis does a great job of telling you these stories that will leave you feeling so much afterwards but you also learned a lot i don't think there's one book of hers that i've read that i haven't learned something new about next is another author that i have a couple of books by and that is elizabeth wein so here we have codename verity and rose under fire both of these books are companions so they do go along with each other but you don't have to have read one in order to read the other i would recommend though that you read both of them because whoo my goodness so elizabeth wein is very interesting because she actually focuses on pilots which i think is really cool and in particular female pilots so in codename verity you are following the interrogation of a young girl who has crash landed in nazi occupied france and she's being interrogated by the gestapo and that is the whole story it's like just everything that has happened to her in this interrogation as she's telling them so it's very fascinating and a really interesting way to tell the story i left the audiobook for both of these actually so if you are able that's a great way to consume them although also reading it physically is i mean they're really fantastic books either way but rose under fire this one is set in a concentration camp that is specifically for female prisoners so once again you are following a female pilot who has been captured by the germans and brought to ravensbrook which is this concentration camp for females and this like both of these stories just oh my goodness they are kind of indescribable to read but once again books that taught me a lot at the same time well i got this incredible story about these female pilots and what they experienced and it was just oh i don't even know how to describe my experience reading both of these books but they were fantastic next is we are not free by tracy i have talked about this book quite a bit recently because it absolutely blew me away i loved it so much and i feel like one place where historical fiction is lacking is in diversity there are a lot of eurocentric historical fictions and those i mean that makes up the majority of what i've read because i haven't really seen all that many that aren't although they do exist and i have been picking them up and reading them but a lot of them are eurocentric so if you have any recommendations for different y a historical fictions outside of europe or anything like that uh please leave them down below because i would love to check them out but we are not free is set in i mean it is set in america but it is following japanese americans 14 different teenagers who they have been taken into these incarceration camps and you see their lives being completely torn apart for no other reason other than racism and prejudice and you see them being turned against each other as well like i didn't know that these camps also existed in canada and i felt like this taught me a lot about that it's such a shameful part of recent history that needs to be talked about more and this book did such a fabulous job of bringing that to life there's 14 different teenagers that you are getting the perspective of in here but it didn't feel convoluted it didn't feel like too much i felt like i was seeing all 14 different personalities even for a short amount of time i felt connected to them and their stories and seeing what they were going through was absolutely horrible so i highly recommend this book it is fabulously done and it will definitely teach you something next i have another two books by one author i don't know what it is with historical fiction like i feel like it's just certain authors write historical fiction and then i end up picking up all of their books but that author is monica hesse so the first book that i picked up of hers is girl in the blue coat and this book is set in amsterdam during world war ii so it's the nazi occupied netherlands and my mom's side of the family is actually dutch so this book meant a lot to me personally because it showed so much of the dutch experience during world war ii and i also had talked to a relative of mine for a school project about his experience he was very young but about his experience living in nazi occupied netherlands and i felt like so much of what was in this book rang true to what he had told me so it was just a very interesting experience reading this book shortly after having talked with him and i felt like i just learned so much about like what my grandparents went through and what all my relatives went through but it also is a really interesting mystery story so the main character she is working on the black market but just with like small things and then she ends up getting this big job that she isn't really expecting to take on but one of her neighbors was actually hiding a jewish girl and now that jewish girl has gone missing so her neighbor has tasked her with trying to find her and they're trying to piece together what might have happened to her it's definitely a sad story which is to be expected but really well done and the author actually she's originally a reporter and i felt like that came through a lot with her writing especially in the mystery but also in this book so this is her other book they went left she also has a book that is set in incarceration camps as well that i still need to read that one is called the war outside but they went left came out last year and this one really piqued my interest because it is set after world war ii so you are following a character who is in a displaced person's camp because all of these people were put in these camps and torn apart from their families and they don't know who has survived and who has died and they're trying to like get back to life and how do you even do that in such a situation it's really difficult so this main character is trying to find her brother again her brother and her were the only survivors when they were brought to the camps the rest of her family was sent to the left toward the gas chambers while her and her brother were sent to the right so you're following her as she's still worried like she's still terrified for her life after such a traumatic experience and it was a really powerful and informative read and definitely one i recommend if you are really into world war ii historical fiction this is one that is unlike other ones that i've read before speaking of unlike other books that i've read before next is wolf by wolf by ryan graudin so i talked about this book quite a bit last year because it completely just blew me away but this is an alternate history story so it's very different than the other books that i've talked about today but i do still think this one has a major impact and is a fantastic read it's a reimagining of history if the axis powers have won the war so hitler is still alive hitler is in power and you are following a character who was experimented upon during the war and she escaped and now she is going in this motorcycle race because there's a motorcycle race and whoever wins this race gets the chance to meet hitler and she wants to do that so then she can assassinate him so it seems like a very like weird storyline but honestly i went into it quite skeptical but it worked extremely well i just fell in love with this story it was unlike anything i've ever read before and was such a great reimagining of history and made me think a lot i also feel like i would be remiss not to mention a mouse by art spiegelman so this is a graphic novel series and it is based on the author's father's experiences in concentration camps so i actually studied this and i took a course on jewish history and i studied this with that course and it's just such an interesting way to tell the story because the jewish characters are pictured as mice and the nazis are cats so it's just like very scarily accurate and such a powerful way to tell a story like that and definitely one that will leave you like you won't soon forget it i feel like i haven't read this in so long but even just flipping through it the imagery is like incredibly powerful also if you haven't heard of this book i've had to read this book twice for courses and that is night by ellie wiesel this is essential when it comes to historical reads it is by ellie wiesel who he passed away a couple years ago now but he actually was a survivor of concentration camps and he has written a story about that so it's fictionalized but obviously there are kind of some things from his experience there and it's such a powerful read he has done a lot of speaking as well which i think he's definitely worth listening to but if you need somewhere to start with historical reads this is a great one it's very harrowing but entirely worth the read so those are all of the world war ii historical fiction books that i wanted to recommend to you guys today please let me know your recommendations for historical fictions or like i said non-eurocentric historical fictions as well i would love to hear them i can never get enough of historical fiction so definitely always looking for some new ones but i hope you guys enjoyed today's video i hope it helped you out and i will see you guys in another new one soon bye [Music]

Channel: Hailey in Bookland

Views: 9,842

Keywords: books, booktube, young adult, reading, book, hailsheartsnyc, haileyinbookland, hailey in wonderland, teen books, teen reads, ya books, ya reads, young adult books, Hailey LeBlanc, hailey in bookland, book recommendations, what to read, recommending books, historical fiction, historical fiction books, historical fiction books to read, books to real historical, historical books, world war two books, world war two historical fiction

Id: b5xX1D0rbic

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 27 2021