A Song in the Dark by Kimberley Woodhouse

Book Synopsis:

Against the simmering backdrop of the impending WWII, blind virtuoso pianist Chaisley Frappier embarks on a concert tour through a rapidly changing Europe despite the dangers. When she learns that Hitler's escalating regime of injustice is targeting other disabled people, Chaisley realizes she is in a prime position to help those who are threatened reach safety. But the Führer's growing fascination with the celebrated musician endangers her undercover mission and forces her to walk a tightrope between her fame and her calling.

When Rick Zimmerman receives his next assignment from the British Secret Intelligence Service, he's surprised to learn he'll be acting as the personal driver of a world-renowned pianist as she traverses Europe. The role gives him the perfect cover to complete side missions of sabotage and intelligence-gathering, but he soon suspects the brilliant, alluring pianist has secrets of her own. As Chaisley and Rick confront evil at every turn, it will take every bit of faith and courage they possess to triumph over hate--and survive.

My Review:

4/5 stars. I was very excited to read this book. It had a lot of things going for it that intrigued me: it's Christian, it's a WWII-era historical fiction, it's about a musician, and the main character is blind. The story and premise were very compelling, and the disability representation was pretty good, but I had some issues with the pacing and structure.

The highlight of this book for me was the focus on the Nazis' persecution of people with disabilities. I've never read a book about it before, even though the same atrocities happening to the Jews were also happening to them, such as forced sterilization. As someone with a disability, this was an important topic to me. I shared the characters' anger at the ableism taking place.

Another similar aspect I really enjoyed was the representation of blindness in the main character. When Chaisley went blind, the doctor immediately advocated for her to learn life skills and be successful. I loved that, especially because the book is set during a time where accessibility wasn't much of a thing. And then, when Chaisley was an adult, I liked that she could do things very independently but also wasn't some superhuman who didn't ever need help. The one issue I had with the portrayal was that there was a "face feeling" scene, which is a weird stereotype of blind people because no one does that. The scene in context was romantic, but I still thought it wasn't realistic.

While this was a WWII setting, it wasn't exactly wartime yet. I thought it was interested to read a story set in the years before the war, when Hitler is gaining power but his cruelty is more secretive and less widespread. I've read many books set in the middle of the war or the Holocaust, so this was a different perspective.

I also enjoyed how prevalent the characters' Christian faith was. They all prayed constantly for each other and the world. They all believed God had given them a purpose. The story had lots of connections to the book of Esther, with the characters thinking they were meant "for such a time as this" and not fearing death, which I loved.

Now I'll move on to my critiques. I only have a few, and they are all related to the writing/formatting rather than the story itself. First, I kept getting confused early on as to who was speaking because I felt like there weren't always enough dialogue tags. This became less of a problem over time, but it was still a bit unclear at times.

This book mainly followed the limited 3rd person POV of the three main characters, but occasionally, it would switch to a random Nazi and show his thoughts. Those felt unnecessary. I already knew how evil the Nazis were; I didn't need some vague unnamed guy to talk about how much he hates anyone who wasn't the perfect race. There was one time that POV said something about the plot, but then that was shown through the main character's POV a chapter later, anyway. The identity of the random Nazi is later revealed to be somewhat important, but I still thought his short POV snippets added nothing.

Finally, this book took place over several months. That would be fine, except the way the author indicated the time jumps was very jarring. They were very frequent, and often in the middle of chapters. A conversation would end and there would maybe be one or two reflecting paragraphs, but then suddenly there would be a heading for a new date. And the amount of time that passed each time was inconsistent. Sometimes it would be a couple days, sometimes a week or two, other times over a month. That made it hard to keep of track of where we were before. It was all just very fragmented and pulled me out of the story sometimes.

Content:

Language: none

Sexual Content: someone rips a woman's clothes off in an act of violence, forcing her to be naked; kissing, including in more intimate locations like the jawline

Violence/Gore: a character's parents are killed in an air raid; the main girl is blinded from getting glass in her eyes; injuries; wounds; blood; people being taken to camps and forced sterilization (mentioned but not shown); death; attempted murder

Drugs/Alcohol: none