This is a lovely book to introduce the theme of WW2 to middle grade readers. Through the eyes of Marie, we learn about the hardships that the war brought along. In the beginning, not much has changed and even Papa is still with the family, as he is a musician and for that reason has not been called to the front. But soon that changes and Marie, her older brother Peter and Mama find themselves unable to stay at home and have to go and live with Oma, awaiting for Papa to return. There Marie will meet Gabi and they will become friends and life will start again around this new community. But war means poverty and hunger and death and injuries and bombing and fear and Gerda Bean does a terrific job at giving us a realistic representations of that time in history might have felt like as the living experience of a young six year old girl.

Overall, this is a good book and I think young readers interested in the time period will enjoy reading it.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my review copy, all opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it had a great overall feel and the characters had a great family bond. I really felt for the characters and it showed the dark elements through this time-period. Gerda Bean have a great writing style and thought the characters worked with the time-period. It uses the time-period perfectly and I'm glad I was able to read this.

Marie is six years old and lives with her parents and brother in the town of Baden-Baden in the German Black Forest.

At first her Papa isn't called up to fight, as he is a musician and is kept back to keep people's spirits up and this causes Marie some problems with others who are missing a loved one. Later, when he is called to fight, Marie, her mum and her brother, Peter, go to stay with family and Marie makes a friend.

I enjoyed this story and found bits about day to day life interesting, but I didn't really feel like the content warranted the length of the book. There isn't really much that happens and what felt like the ending, when they move again, was actually half way through and then the story seems to be mostly narration of Marie not having much going on. I also wasn't sure that she sounded much like a six year old but I enjoyed the author's writing style and the first half of the story in particular.

Good historical fiction for middle-grade readers. It got into aspects of civilian life during WW2, without the graphic and more disturbing details present in books for older readers.

This book was amazing and I simply couldn't stop reading Best Friends are the Best, I think this was really good wartime book. My favourite part was when Papa returned to the family and watched his daughter play Snow White in the her school play. I didn't like the bit where Papa ate all of the fish including the head and the tail but other than that I really enjoyed this book.

I loved this book! I love how it showed the importance of friendships . Not all friendships come easily. And you have to always fight for what matters in your life.