Thank you to Edelweiss, Berkley, & Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read and review this book before it's publication date! This in no way affected my review, opinions are my own.

✨ 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚 ✨ B̷O̷R̷R̷O̷W̷ B̷Y̷P̷A̷S̷S̷

I know people are so over WWII Historical Fiction but I gotta tell you, I cannot & will not ever be able to get enough of it. (caveat: I have gotten a lot more ~picky~ about the hist fic that I read in that subgenre, because it IS admittedly oversaturated - but if you get the right author and the right story, there's still so much to say!)

THAT BEING SAID, I'm also really enjoying this current publishing trend of featuring books right after / right before the war to explore more of how we got where we did and what we did afterwards - enter Lecia Cornwall's Summer in Berlin, which takes place in the mid 1930s leading up to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

Having read and enjoyed Cornwall's first foray into Historical Fiction last year (The Woman at the Front, re: a female doctor at the front lines in France during WWI), I was VERY much looking forward to this book and it did not disappoint!

I loved how she was able to write such a nuanced book, and treat even the most unsympathetic of characters with an unbiased brush (letting the reader draw their own conclusions, which are of course that they are terrible). Regarding the characters, I loved how we got so many POVs (at least 6) - each enhanced not only our understanding of the characters themselves, but also their interactions with one another and the book and story in its entirety.

Overall this is one I will not hesitate to recommend if someone asks me for a good historical fiction book I've read recently!