To start off, I would like to say a huge thank you to Bookouture, NetGalley and Anna Stuart for letting me have an early copy of this book. Thank you for letting me give my honest review of this book. This book heavily focuses on trauma/experiences that children faced during the concentration camps in WW2. This book also has children talking about their experiences openly which is quite harrowing and heart-breaking. Grief and loss is also mentioned a lot in this book too. If any of these things upset you or make you uncomfortable, this book is not for you. Tasha was torn away from her mother’s arms by a SS guard days before Auschwitz gates were opened. Tasha is desperate to be reunited with her mother and yearns to find her. But in the chaotic aftermath of a war it is not as easy to find her as Tasha thought it would be. Will Tasha find her mother? Or will Tasha never find her mother again? I absolutely adored this book. For someone who has studied children’s psychology and children’s theorists for children’s development and wellbeing, this book was super informative and useful and allowed me to see it in a different context. From the moment the children went to Windermere or what the children referred to as ‘Wondemere’ it was really eye opening to see the effects and the long lasting traumas the concentration camps had on the children. It was nice to see a book mainly focused on the children and how they dealt and began to cope with the trauma. Although it was painful to see the children going through painful and traumatic flashbacks and reliving the horrors they had been exposed to, it really showed you the havoc of trauma/adverse childhood experiences and how this can greatly impact on children’s minds. The scene where the children drew what they had experienced and even the scene where the children thought what the Nazis were doing was normal. It broke my heart but it shows that children were conditioned to believe that this was normal behavior because this is what they have experienced. With that being said, the bonds that Alice made with the children was the whole highlight of the book. She cared so much about the children and would do anything for them. One quote in particular stood out to me where she talked about not getting too attached to the children as they were not her children but could not stop herself. Alice resonated so much with me as someone who has worked with children from birth to sixteen years old, the bonds you make with children are so precious and you can not help but get attached to the children. I also totally feel so sorry for Alice when she had to say goodbye to some of the children. The bond between her and Tasha was so precious. A beautiful and heartwarming bond that Tasha definitely needed as she continued to search for her mother. I was not ready for Chapter 19 at all. The chapter destroyed me emotionally and I had to take a minute to breathe. I was NOT ready for it to happen and did not see it. The fact that it was loosely based on a true story(happened a lot later than the date in the novel) broke my heart even more reading the historical notes at the end. The conversation that follows after this particular event really showed once again the trauma and the beliefs that the children had after the concentration camps.Please be aware that children talked openly about the traumas and the experiences they faced later in the book. Please be mindful of this when you are reading. This was such a hard chapter and the tears were crazy. Considering I was only 47% in, I knew this book was amazing. I also have to applaud the author for her emotional scenes. Throughout this novel, I was a mess throughout and had to constantly put down my book due to the tears. The author really made you go through all the emotions all at once. Furthermore, the author also made this as historically accurate as she could, which is another thing I love to see. At the end of this novel, she included historical notes which were full of information that was not included in the novel and ways you could research more. The level of detail was fabulous. It has made me really want to research and learn more about what they did for the Holocaust. I did not know that this was part of a series and read this as a standalone book but did not feel that it impacted me that I had not read the other books in the series. I am so glad that I have now found another historical fiction author that I like and I can not wait to go back and read the other two books before this one.