Book Review: Winter in Wartime by Jan Terlouw

I don't read a lot of Dutch books, do I? I barely read any Dutch books in recent years other than The Letter for the King and some educational ones, I guess. But other than that, most of the ones I read are either in English or translated from another language into either that or Dutch.

Anyhow, Winter in Wartime, or Oorlogswinter as the original title goes, is a novel written by Jan Terlouw. It takes place during the Hunger Winter, a famine in the Netherlands in the last year of World War II. It's a quite popular book here, and has been translated into English as well. I'm not too certain about other languages.

Anyways, let's talk about this book! Minor spoilers ahead! 

Michiel is a boy, living in the Netherlands in World War II. Involuntarily, he ends up becoming more and more caught up in the Resistance against the Germans, by taking care of a wounded English soldier. Things slowly seem to get worse and worse, with his friend being arrested, his father killed, and there seemingly be a traitor on their midst who wants to sabotage everything.

I was really engaged by this novel. I missed out on reading it earlier, but now that I finally did, I must say, I’m not disappointed. The emotions are very well captured, the characters feel believable and make realistic decisions, and you just root so much for Michiel, Jack and the others in their fight against the Germans and NSB’ers, the Dutch equivalent of nazi's.

The characters are very well written. They have clear motivations and you want them to succeed so bad through all of this. Michiel is an admirable protagonist. Jack, the Englishman he looks after, is a good character as well. There’s others, like his sister, his parents, Uncle Ben (no, not the Spider Man one), Schafter and more , and they all feel realistic. There is a twist villain, too, but I don’t think you’d see it coming unless you knew, so it’s rather well executed. I sure was surprised when I first found out who the villain was when I first saw the movie adaptation. Yes, I watched the movie before reading the book. Shame on me.

The pacing was good. Sometimes we have time skips, but it’s always for the better. The book isn’t very long, but still an attractive length to read, especially for teens. In high school I remember quite a lot of my classmates doing their book reports on Winter in Wartime, actually.

I just really appreciate this book for it’s realism and how it introduced many younger readers to the harshness of World War II. Based off the author’s own experiences, it just feels so real. I definitely recommend you pick up this book and give it a read!

Rating: 4/5

There has also been a movie adaptation of the book, which is fairly faithful and does a good job of portraying the story! I recommend this one as well.