Note: Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow Paperbacks, and author Kirsty Manning for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

With so much historical fiction centered around World War II, it would seem that it’s hard to find a unique story. However, in The Hidden Book, not only is the story unique but it is based on actual events. A book of photographs of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria was supposed to be used as Nazi propaganda. Instead, it ended up helping convict Nazi generals of war crimes at Nuremberg. It now sits in the Sydney Jewish Museum. How the book ended up in Australia is a bit of a mystery, and Manning has crafted an excellent fictional tale to tell the story.

In Austria in 1942, Lena is a young woman lives with her family in Mauthausen. Under Nazi occupation, they are getting by with her work at a tool factory and her father’s job as an Engineer for the City. Prisoners from the Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen march past her home every day on the way to work. When there’s an accident, she becomes acquainted with several of the prisoners. She then helps them smuggle negatives of photographs taken at the camp out of the prison and held so that the Nazis can’t destroy them.

In Australia in the 1980s, Hannah Campbell lives on a rural farm with her mother, Roza, who is widowed. Roza’s father, Nico, visits them from time to time. On one visit, he brings a boo of photographs and Roza hides them away. Curious, Hannah finds the book and sees terrible photos of men in striped clothes. One of the men is her beloved grandfather, who is much younger in the photo.

The Hidden Book follows these two stories, as Hannah wants to learn more about her past, but her mother wishes it would just go away. There is friction between them as Hannah grows into an adult who studies history, but eventually, the two women grow in their relationship.

I loved The Hidden Book on many different levels. I hadn’t heard about the Mauthausen concentration camp. I knew of Auschwitz and a few others, but Mauthausen was on a different level. Manning describes the hard work the prisoners were put through, and if it didn’t look like they could work anymore, the prison guards sent the prisoners to the gas chamber. Manning really drills home how backbreaking this work was and how awful the conditions were. I loved the dynamic between Nico and Lena. Lena is in survival mode, afraid of her sister being sent to the camp after suffering brain damage following an accident. Her main goal is to protect her, yet she feels she must help Nico and the other prisoners as much as possible. She is not a denier of what’s going on but is just trying to protect her family by going along for the most part.

Hannah is a typical teenager in many ways. Although I was upset that Roza kept denying her the book, in the end, it made sense. Hannah has to grow and see the evidence as much more than the subject of a university thesis and understand the pain that it represents. She has to live her life before she can fully appreciate the gravity of the contents of the book. This isn’t the reason Roza hides the book from her, but it works out in the long run. Their relationship is complex, and I like that they were also quite deep, with Hannah having her share of relationships and growing as a person throughout the book.

I do recommend The Hidden Book to those who enjoy historical fiction. It’s a bit different than other World War II historical fiction that I’ve read. The characters have depth and grow and change. It will break your heart in places, but in the end, I felt I had a greater understanding of this aspect of the war.