The Pact by Roberta Kagan

The Pact by Roberta Kagan

Rating: 2 stars out of 5

"That's what I love about reading. You can go to places that are scary and dangerous without ever leaving the safety of your room."

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

I was incredibly excited to pick this book up. I have relatives who are Jewish and novels set in the WWII time period are incredibly resonant to me. This time period also, almost by definition, tends to provide a lot of drama and conflict that it's easy to sink your teeth into.

The book opens with a bang in 1940, and if the first chapter were the only thing I had to go on I would have said this could surely be an international bestseller. In it, the main protagonist  (Anna) and her family are discovered by the gestapo. I was immediately on the edge of my seat and dying to know what happens next.

Unfortunately what happens next is that we are taken back to Anna's childhood and her relationship with two friends, Elisa and Bernie, and one frenemy, Dagna (who bizarrely is not currently mentioned in the book description despite being a huge part of the story). We flash forward to the 1940 capture again only twice-- once about a third of the way through the book and once at the very end. These sections were gripping. The book ends on a cliff-hanger so amazing that it made me want to read the next book in the series, something I'd have said was unlikely 10 pages before. 

Despite the problems I am about to describe, the book generally held my attention, and I think Kagan is a writer with solid ideas for plot and it's execution. 

Unfortunately, all of the main characters but one were unlikable. Anna vacillates between almost too naïve to be believed and profoundly observant-- for instance she literally does not know that lesbians exist, and truly thinks an anti-Semite she's dating won't care once she tells him she's a Jew. But! as a child, she's able to divine that her maid is upset with her not for anything actually having to do with her, but because being around her makes the maid's daughter want expensive things. It was sometimes hard to feel like Anna was a real person.

In the meantime, Dagna is a raging anti-Semite, unbelievably manipulative, and cruel. Elisa is shallow, vain, and incredibly stupid, as well as disloyal. It was hard to feel any sympathy for them. Bernie was kind, principled, and level headed, but forgettable for much of the book, as the main focus of the book is Anna and she thinks far more about Elisa and Dagna. 

While there's hope that some of the following points may be cleared up in the final print edition, the way the dialogue was written throughout was stilted and awkward. The characters all spoke to one another very formally and unnaturally, even for the time period. A lot of the text was repetitive or told instead of showing. For example at one point we are told Anna loves books; one sentence later we are told Anna loves to read. This could have been effectively shown by her regularly going to a library or reading, and in fact it was later, so this felt pointless. Descriptions were often simplistic. For example one character is simply described as having  "a chubby face, bright blue eyes, and light brown hair". I don't think authors should wax poetic about every little thing, but it felt forced, not like I was coming upon information naturally in the course of the story.

A final pet peeve was that, whenever a Jewish character would say a Hebrew or Yiddish word out loud to another Jewish character, they would immediately verbally follow it with the English translation, as though another Jewish person would not know what the word goyim meant. I understand the desire for the audience to understand the dialogue but I think it would have been better to let them figure it out from context, or from another character's thoughts on the remarks made, or even, if necessary, from Google. 

I would recommend this to fans of historical fiction set during WWII, and those who are all about a good cliffhanger.