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Monday 11 March 2019

✿ The Things We Cannot Say ✿ Kelly Rimmer ✿





In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.

Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.

Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative that weaves together two women’s stories into a tapestry of perseverance, loyalty, love and honor. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.



I very much enjoyed Kelly Rimmer's book Before I Let You Go, so I was intrigued to read The Things We Cannot Say.
What a hauntingly beautiful and emotional read it was for me.
The past and present are wonderfully woven together as we learn Alina's story, from occupied Poland in 1942 to the present. 
So much bravery.  So much resilience, so much rebellion and resistance.
Ms Rimmer had me completely drawn into the story, I could feel the hunger and fear of Alina, Tomasz in Poland, I have been reading more stories set in this time period lately, and I have never felt the emotion in them that I felt with The Things We Cannot Say.
I admit that it was a very emotional read for me.  I swear I read the last 50 pages through my tears, as the story came to it's climax.  So have your tissues ready!
It has been a couple of days since I finished this book, and I am still thinking about it, which is a sign of a wonderful story to me.
Beautiful and heartbreaking, this is going to be one of my favourite reads of 2019.
I can't wait to see what Ms Rimmer brings us next.