The Book of Lost Names by Kristen Harmel

 The Ridgeview Ward's book club, Patti, in particular, chose this book, so I ordered it. I had high hopes after the first few interesting pages, and generally got into it and enjoyed it until I realized the characters were not going to develop, Eva was going to be tearful and cry through the whole book, and the romantic interest was going to be rather trite. Oh well. I hope I can be diplomatic tonight when we discuss it at our little meeting. I like interesting characters who develop and have nuance and shades of good and bad. These poor characters were flat, flat, flat, and Eva was plagued with guilt, and her mother was always negative and awful...it just got redundant.

The interesting part for me was the plot around the forgeries of papers for Jews and others seeking to escape Nazi Germany. They used a book, and put symbols above the letters on each succeeding page in a Fibonacci sequence so they could never be traced. Eva didn't want the names to be lost. It was also cool how her great lover, Remy, survived the war and how they were reunited years later. That was sweet. Otherwise...ho hum. I'm kind of over the World War II Nazi era....

As Jewish Eva became acquainted with the Catholic priest and other thorny issues, it could have been an interesting look into the kind of thinking and learning that goes on as one examines their religious beliefs. This was only done in the most superficial manner. I won't be bothering with this author's other books, although this one wasn't bad...just not that great, and not worth pursuing others...