Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Bookoutre, and author Siobhan Curham 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.

In 1984, a rebellious 13-year-old was sent to be with her grandmother for the summer. Cindy called herself “Raven” and is struggling with anxiety and depression, although no one really knows that. Her parents are always fighting and she feels like an afterthought most of the time.

Her grandmother, Coralie, is estranged from the family a bit and lives like a recluse in Sonoma, California. She’s widowed and has never talked about what it was like living in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Raven and Coralie bond, and soon she is opening up to her granddaughter about things she never divulged to anyone, not even her late husband.

The Resistance Bakery immerses the reader in Paris during the occupation. Coralie is an up-and-coming pastry chef at the Hotel Lutetia when the tanks roll in. Most of the staff leaves the hotel, which is taken over by the Nazis and becomes the headquarters of the Abwehr, the German Intelligence service. Coralie leaves as well, then finds out that by working there she could be of help to the French Resistance.

The themes here are what I expected from historical fiction set during World War II. The Nazis are bad and the French people are like the metaphorical frogs in boiling water. The ones who know what’s coming leave. The ones who stay behind don’t think the bad things will happen. Slowly but surely they do, from the imprisonment of dissenters and demonstrators to the round-up and deportation of Jewish French citizens.

Coralie is conflicted at times. The Germans she works with in the kitchen of Hotel Lutetia seem to be ordinary people just like her French compatriots. She bonds with the head chef as well as one of the other young workers. This is a good parallel to the fear that Raven has over the possibility of nuclear war. She, too, sees the Soviets as “the enemy” but as her grandmother tells her story, she begins to realize that there are people there who feel the same as she does. It’s often a nation’s leaders who cause the conflict, not the ordinary people who are just trying to live their lives.

The Resistance Bakery does paint the German occupiers in a sympathetic light. Some people might have an issue with that. As was the case with the Nuremberg Trials, “just following orders” is not an excuse. However, no one is as they seem in this case. The book makes the point that sometimes people do the best they can in impossible situations. I can remember a woman I worked with in the late 1980s who was a child in Germany during the war. Her father was forced to fight for Germany while her family helped hide people and suffered for it. There were a lot of these cases that got buried in the idea of a black-and-white world where it’s good guys versus bad guys.

I enjoyed The Resistance Bakery quite a bit and read it quickly. The characters were well-developed and relatable. The ending felt like a bit too much like a fairy-tale, but it was fun. The story is a good one and I was always hungry for pastries and bread while reading it. I need to find pastries like Coraline makes.