Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Alina is the youngest daughter of the Dziak family. Truda her oldest sister is married to Mateusz. Alina's twin brothers, Filipe and Stanislaw help her father, Bartuk, and her mother, Faustina with farming. Alina, being the youngest, gets away with doing less work and uses any free time she has to spend it with Tomasz, her true love. Kelly Rimmer has raised the already-high bar with this unforgettable novel, THE THINGS WE CANNOT SAY. Alina and Tomasz's story is one of bravery, resilience, and the lengths we will go to for the ones we love. Fans of Jodi Picoult and Kristin Hannah now have a new go-to author' Sally Hepworth, author of THE SECRETS OF MIDWIVES
Kelly Rimmer is the USA Today best selling author of contemporary and historical fiction novels including Me Without You, The Secret Daughter, and her most recent release, The Things We Cannot Say. She is also the author of the contemporary romance series, Start Up in the City. Kelly lives in rural Australia with her family. The story comes together in an emotional and powerful ending that will surely have you reaching for tissues. After reading this one we were left a mess, cried a bit and then shared our thoughts with each other. This is the type of story to share with someone and I am glad to be able to share with Lindsay and a couple of our Traveling Sisters.This captivating tale was my introduction to the breathtaking storytelling of Kelly Rimmer, and it was an exceptional and epic experience. I was immediately embroiled in the vastly different situations and timelines that consumed and defined Alice and Alina’s worlds, with each storyline cast with curiously and uniquely fascinating characters and circumstances. The Things We Cannot Say had me crying and I usually don't cry when I read books, no matter how sad. But this story just tore the tears from me, in so many ways. Two time periods are linked together by one woman and the truth she couldn't tell, until her very last days. Straddling the past and the present, The Things We Cannot Say is a mesmerizing tale of family, memory, forgiveness, and unconditional love, but it is also about retrieving lost stories. In Poland, Alina and best friend Tomasz have grown up and fallen in love. They are engaged and Tomasz heads off to train to be a doctor in Warsaw. However, the events of the world conspire to threaten their romance and lives together. Their young love creates a strong bond that must overcome many obstacles. I was reminded that to the Nazis, Poles were one small step below Jewish people, and they were treated horribly. It was a time of despair and injustice, some took dangerous risks to hide Jewish people, and all struggled to find enough food to eat. From the bestselling author of Truths I Never Told You, Before I Let You Go, and the The Warsaw Orphan, Kelly Rimmer’s powerful WWII novel follows a woman’s urgent search for answers to a family mystery that uncovers truths about herself that she never expected.
The story of Alina and Tomasz, tore my heart in two, the horror of the Holocaust being a reality, a simple life becoming an unrelenting, constant bombardment of brutality and death. And it is through Alice that we find out the secrets that Hannah has hidden from her family. Secrets that she and her husband Saul could never bring themselves to reveal about their days in Poland, during the Holocaust. Alice's grandmother, Alina, is 95 years old and near the end of her journey on earth. Alina survived WW II while living in Poland and immigrated to America. Alice has a 10 year old gifted daughter (Pascal) and a seven year old son (Eddison) on the autism spectrum. Alice’s arrival in Trzebinia showed a very different town to 1942. Her search of that past was aided by a guide who specialized in family history, and Zofia was a friendly and helpful young woman. But would they find any answers? Everywhere they looked they were met with dead ends. Alice was desperate as the time frame for her Babcia was shrinking…In the year 1939, Alina lives on a family farm in southern Poland. Her heart belongs to Tomasz Slaski, a local boy who wants to be a doctor. Their love is tested when Tomasz leaves for Warsaw to pursue his studies just weeks before the Nazis invade Poland.
As farmers, Alina and her family live a hard yet comfortable life until the invasion. When the Nazis invade, everything changes drastically. Alina’s quiet little town is taken over by Nazis, and the climate becomes divisive and hateful. At the same time, Tomasz completely disappears. She waits and waits to hear from Tomasz as Nazi soldiers patrol her family’s farm. It is rare that I prefer the modern timeline over the one in the past, but I really enjoyed Alice’s story over Alina’s. The challenges that Alice faced — her family situation, an overbearing mother, pushing herself out of her comfort zone, the death of a loved one — somehow felt much more urgent than Alina with the encroaching Nazis. Part of that is the way that characters were drawn, but I think it’s because Rimmer decided to focus more on Alina’s love story with Tomasz. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely horrific things described in Alina’s timeline, but she seemed mostly sheltered from it until the very end of the book. As her heart broke, my heart broke, I admit that. There’s a lot that I’m not mentioning here concerning that, with a family mystery and a quest across Poland, but I really don’t want to spoil anything in case you plan to read this one, and with giving one clue, I’m afraid I’d spoil something big.From the bestselling author of Truths I Never Told You, Before I Let You Go , and the The Warsaw Orphan, Kelly Rimmer’s powerful WWII novel follows a woman’s urgent search for answers to a family mystery that uncovers truths about herself that she never expected.
This is another dual story timeline — Alina, a Polish teenager living through the early days of the Nazi invasion and subjugation of her country, and Alice, a stay-at-home mom in Florida with a gifted daughter, a severely autistic son, and a distant husband. At the start of the novel, Alice’s Babcia Hanna has a massive stroke and is hospitalized; Babcia isn’t able to communicate well, and she keeps repeating a variation of “Babcia fire Tomasz Poland” to the bafflement of her daughter (who is a workaholic judge) and Alice. Ultimately, it becomes clear that she wants Alice to return to her hometown to solve some sort of mystery — yes, yes, I’m totally summarizing this, but I don’t want to give away too many details. We are spoiler free over here, but I don’t think it’s hard to realize that Alina is Hanna; that’s not the twist — the twist comes to be how did she get to Florida in 1943. Lots to Love: Even though the histfic aspect of The Things We Cannot Say is interesting, the love story is compelling and heartbreaking, the grandmother/granddaughter relationship is heartfelt, and the theme of reconciliation is memorable.Thanks to Netgalley and Harlequin-Graydon House Books for a digital galley in exchange for an honest review. I also liked the narrative style, with the two separate voices: Alina’s voice recounting her life and the events she lived through in Poland after the German invasion, and Alice’s present day voice as she navigates through her own life and then an unexpected trip to Poland. Kelly Rimmer is also a great writer, and she creates a wonderful vision of the little town in Poland, life under occupation, and also Polish farm life.
Great Deal 
New Comment