Praise
The magnificent Anika Scott has written a lush and beautifully rendered novel about the meaning of family and the power of love.
Anika Scott has a gift for weaving incredibly researched historical detail into an emotionally powerful story that left me with tears in my eyes. Historical fiction fans will love this book!
Anika Scott pens a fascinating tale of secrets, surveillance, and sisterhood set against the burgeoning Cold War. Two very different sisters come to shattered postwar Berlin—KGB doyenne Vera, fanatically committed to Stalin's vision, and interpreter Marya, embroiled in an affair with a British officer—and are pitted against each other in an espionage plot that will see one sister elevated and the other exiled in disgrace. But who is the real traitor, and who is hiding the biggest secret of all? The Soviet Sisters will suck you in to the very last page!
Electrifying, meticulously researched, and expertly plotted, The Soviet Sisters is at once a Cold War thriller, a gripping spy story, a page-turning mystery, and a familial drama.
This novel whisked me away to 1930s Chicago and all the wonders of the World's Fair. Family secrets, revenge and women who refuse to do what they're told -- an ideal combination.
Anika Scott’s epic novel offers a captivating tour through the reckoning years that followed WWII when clarifying identities, unearthing truths, and facing judgements was the only way to rebuild a life. The novel’s heroine, Clara, marches along the razor’s edge between the leviathan of the past and a future full of mine shafts. I will never forget her unending struggle to rise above the dark lineage thrust upon her and her battle to stay connected to the deep binds of love, responsibility, and compassion.
Beautifully atmospheric—at once an intricate portrayal of the ties that bind, and a tense and timely portrayal of truth.
The German Heiress is the kind of novel we need now more than ever. Set in Germany, eighteen months after the war, reckonings of every sort are playing out and Anika Scott deftly builds a world in which all the shades of gray--Nazi collaboration and complicity among civilians--are brought to life. The German Heiress achieves what the best historical fiction can, asking us to see the past, and then pushing us to see ourselves in that past, demanding: Who would you have been then? What would you have done? Unflinching and absorbing, The German Heiress does not let you look away.
I loved Finding Clara. It’s a special novel that opens one's mind to aspects of history we on the "winning" side have given little thought to, and a moving story of courage and everyday heroism rising to meet unbearable challenges.
This tale of historical fiction and drama will transport readers to the fantasy and glory that was the 1933 World's Fair.
Anika Scott’s riveting novel, The German Heiress, compellingly explores the nature of innocence and guilt, and the human desire for redemption. A terrific book with historical detail skillfully woven into the fabric of the story. An absolute must-read for all fans of World War II fiction!
Meticulously researched and plotted like a noir thriller, The German Heiress tells a different story of WWII -- of characters grappling with their own guilt and driven by the question of what they could have done to change the past.
What a great debut! I loved this book, especially since it looks at the aftermath of war from a rare perspective: the appalling suffering that Germans faced in their devastated cities after 1945, and the guilt of those who’d followed the Nazi rules. It still haunts me, days after finishing it.
Crackling with tension and rife with traitors, one thing is clear in post-WWII Berlin: trust no one. With expertise, Anika Scott delves into the complex labyrinth of women and men attempting to break free from the shackles of ideology and rise from the embers of war to build a better future for themselves and the world. The Soviet Sisters is espionage fiction at its finest.
Tantalizing and moving, The Soviet Sisters twists, contorts, and interweaves the lives and betrayals of two sisters forced to pit family and love against duty and truth. Epic in scope, forensic in detail, this is a beguiling and riveting story.
What a page-turner! The era and setting were very fresh, I learnt so much, and I loved being taken around post-war Berlin. East and West, love and hate—this story gives beautiful insight into the opposites that can make or break a sisters' bond. Compelling.
This is a masterful, brilliantly plotted novel. I was gripped from the first pages, never knowing which of the sisters’ first-person narratives to trust or what would happen next. Cleverly playing on concepts of truth, ideology, and loyalty, the characters in The Soviet Sisters are put to ultimate tests of morality. Immaculately researched and eloquently written, Scott’s novel provides the reader a very clear sense of the tension and political complexity of a tumultuous time. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Set in a fascinating era of change in post-war Europe, The Soviet Sisters is a thrilling spy novel with many twists and surprises. It is also a beautifully nuanced portrait of sibling love and rivalry.
One sister faces West, with an open mind and an open heart. The other faces East, armed with ambition, ideology, and an agenda. One sister ruthlessly trapped and manipulated by the other. It’s a compelling read, and Anika Scott does a terrific job portraying the war, and the edginess that was post-war Berlin as the Iron Curtain lowered.
Scott’s magnetic debut follows one woman’s quest for survival amid the devastation of post-WWII Germany… Scott’s narrative is embellished with realistic depictions of rubble-filled German cities, scavenging residents, and moral questions about Clara’s family ties to the Nazi regime. Fans of WWII fiction will be intrigued by Scott’s exploration of how war changes the moral compass of its victims.