This story is told through a dual timeline. It is beautifully written.
This is a beautiful story about grief and guilt. It will make you feel all the emotions

I haven’t read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas for years and years but I remember how powerful and heart wrenching it is and I was curious as to how a sequel would work. Having now read All the Broken Places, I can say that the sequel is just as powerful and thought provoking as its predecessor. This is a book full of questions of morality, guilt and redemption. It is gripping, beautifully written and at times genuinely heartbreaking.

The book follows Gretel, the sister from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and her life after the war. She is not always a wholly likeable character, often brittle and certainly immensely damaged, and yet, I found her completely captivating and deeply compelling to follow. Her entire life has been overshadowed by the inescapable spectre of her family’s culpability in the holocaust and her guilt is constant and unrelenting. As an old woman, she finds herself in yet another traumatic situation and has to decide whether to act to protect a young boy in danger. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is tense, provocative, elegant and emotional, and will live in its readers minds for a long time to come.

All The Broken Places is the sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and this time the story is told from the perspective of Gretel, Bruno's older sister.

Now in her nineties and living in a prestigious London address, Gretel's long concealed memories of her brother are wrenched to the surface by a boy who moves in to the apartment below.

Deftly switching between past and present, we learn heartbreaking details about the family's time at Auschwitz, what happened to the family afterwards, and explore feelings of guilt, complicity and grief.

A very emotional read examining difficult issues such as how culpable a young person may be in the context of the events unfolding around them, whether they can ever atone for the crimes of their loved ones, as well as the people who deliberately looked the other way and didn't challenge the evil taking place around them.

I absolutely LOVED this book. I thought book 1 was amazing, but I think I loved this one even more. Interesting, intriguing, Boynes did a wonderful job of bringing history up to date. I’m late in getting to this one and yet I found myself trying to make this book last longer! My favourite book of the year so far.

This is a sequel to the boy in the striped pyjamas which I watched as a film before I read the book. This is a poignant story of Gretel who is in her nineties and lives in London in a luxury apartment. She has a secret to hide and, as a consequence keeps herself to herself most of the time. However, when a young boy moves in downstairs she can’t help but befriend him and her secret can’t stay safe for too much longer,

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of John Boyne. With a newly established book club that I host in work (public library) my first selection was this book.
To say it went down well is an understatement. I was delighted it was such a success. I absolutely loved every single minute of this book. There were bits I really didn't see coming, even though I was totally engrossed, John's writing draws me so far into the story, the world could grind to a halt and I wouldn't notice.
Loved loved loved

Unfortunately I will be unable to give feedback on this book. I requested this book and had intentions of reading it. However my taste in books has changed and I do not feel that a review from me would do the book justice

What a tale. I loved The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and this was just as good.

We follow Gretel in her later years in this one., and find out more about her life after the war - where she went and what happened to her.

There are many revelations throughout, some that are hinted at early on but don’t get revealed until much later in the book. Some I didn’t even see coming.

Amazing and harrowing, and a real page turner

Gretel Fernsby has a terrible secret that she’d rather others didn’t know. If you’ve read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, you’ll recognise the name: Gretel is the daughter of the camp Commandant of Auschwitz.

In short chapters, flashing between the past and the present, we learn about 91 year old Gretel’s past, and what happened when she and her mother escaped Germany.

Gretel is very well off, living in an expensive block of very large flats in central London. She doesn’t really have any friends, and seems to keep her true self from everyone including her son.
She is confronted with the memory of her younger brother, Bruno, when a boy of his age moves in to the downstairs flat. She realises that his father is violent, and his mother is abused. Gretel can’t let this kind of violence happen again.

The characters in this were superb. Whilst the first book had its problems with historical accuracy, I feel that this book centred more around trauma, guilt and shame. Gretel carries all of these things around with her forever. She feels culpable for what happened in the camp - even though she was both a child and female. In retrospect, she is able to see what was wrong with the nazi regime, but at the time would have been brainwashed. She wouldn’t have known a time where Jews and other “undesirable” minorities would have been treated any differently. The wonder is that she went on to learn that this was wrong. The trauma that she carries with her from the death of her brother, learning about what her father was guilty of, and occurrences in Paris, is lifelong.

From Gretel’s life experiences to those of her downstairs neighbour, everything is handled with compassion and tact. Again, it’s not perfect, but then neither are humans. And that is what this book shows above all: that we can learn from our mistakes if we are willing to do so.

A powerful sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas that just has to be read. I was a huge fan of The Boy in the striped pyjamas, meeting John at author readings for my master's degree so I had to read this sequel which is equally poignant. The continuation of Gretel's story gives the reader so many moral quandaries to ponder about grief, guilt and punishment. Heartbreaking and provoking. The allegorical references are stunning.

Gretel is an old woman living in a flat following her escape from Germany after the Second World War. When a family moved into the flat below she has a chance to save a young boy - something she should have done years ago during the war.

The boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a book that I read a while ago and has always stayed with me and when I saw that there was a follow up book I knew I needed to read it. This book was so good - told from the older sisters perspective and the guilt that she went through for years because of what happened. I liked how the new storyline was also woven into it - yet another powerful book by this author and one that I would read again.

I read the Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas many years ago when it first came out and really impacted my teeange mind. I was really curious to see how this new story would link to the original one and really afraid that it wouldn’t make it justice.

Now that I have finished it, I’d say overall this book delivered a very interesting story that had enough details and touches to “pay homenage” to the first book but was strong enough to stand on its own. Although it took me a little bit to warm to the story, I soon started forgotting about the boy and became more and more intrigued about the girl and the woman she became.

It has a detph and quite a few twists that I was not expecting but positively surprised me. I can definitively recommend this story to historical fiction readers and fans of the author.

If you love thrillers, don't miss this gripping, suspenseful tale. Fast paced and a great twist. A great book for 2023

Absolutely outstandingly heartbreaking . The story and characters gripped me from the beginning. Reading the main characters story and understanding the struggles and guilt she encountered post war were hard to read at times but so well written that i couldnt put it down. Id definitely recommend this to read, a very strong follow up to the boy in striped pajamas

I enjoyed this book. I found it intense and thought provoking. I’ve read a few reviews saying that the plot is unbelievable but regardless of opinion, I found it heart warming and I felt all the emotions when reading this. I thought it was a quiet sequel to a book I read as a child; especially now I’m an adult. Seamless

This book is really difficult to describe. The horrors of the past vs the present day is difficult to understand. Recommended.

This is so beautifully written, it has left a place on my heart. Throughly enjoyed it from start to end. In fact I just didn't want it to end. I've not read the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and I assume this book is a general follow on from it. This is definitely one of the best books I've read in a while and it absolutely deserves the 5 stars.

Thank you Netgalley.

Another fantastic story from John, one of our greatest storytellers. He never disappoints. Such poignant and difficult subject matter, yet draws the reader in from start to finish.

I am quite a bit late reviewing this one, for different reasons. I reread The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas before I read this (that was a 5 star read a few years ago). I loved this sequel. I really liked Gretel and felt for her throughout the whole story. There are lots of well written characters and a lot of plot. I enjoyed the various timelines. Loved it. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. I have chosen to write this honest review voluntarily and it reflects my personal opinion.
I read 'The boy in the Striped pyjamas' many years ago, and it made a big impression on me and whilst this book is a little more contrived with reliance on a couple of twists to provide a more contemporary feel it has also provoked many emotions. I thought Gretel was well-drawn, a complex character, the product of a background of beliefs, family influence and finally the realisation that the rest of the world looks at the events of the second world war rather differently now. The sub-story linking the present day boy to her memories of her brother was interesting but I didn't think it added anything to Gretel's development or story. Not all sequels are good, this is definitely worth reading