I received this from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I enjoy reading about WWII and this book was right on topic. The plot was a little difficult to get lost in, but good otherwise. ( )

This book is intriguing and entertaining.
It is about life, friendship, trust, choices, deceptions and decisions.
About inside and outside worlds navigating between the lives of an old former German soldier and a young Australian boy. ( )

I received this book as part of the member giveaway programme in exchange for an honest review.

I did enjoy reading this book, the subject matter was genuinely interesting. I've often thought about how German soldiers dealt with the psychological aftermath of what they experienced in WWII, especially when the evil that was Nazism became known.

There were one or two issues with the book. I found the characters a little bit like caricatures. The bad man behaved badly, the good man behaved nicely, the teenage boy behaved like a teenage boy. Maybe it would have been good to see more development into fully rounded characters.

However it is, on the whole, a good story and I enjoyed it. ( )

I loved it. It was a good pace of novel, an interesting subject and well told. ( )

Was Australia a haven for Nazi's?

The book starts out with the story of a young, wounded soldier named Peter who deserts the German army in WWII to find refuge with a Polish couple. He is destined to leave Europe and moves to Australia to start a new life under a new name.

This is also a coming of age story in the present about a young teen named Eric who is trying to fit in at his new school on the coast of Australia. He has issues with his parents who fight incessantly and he finds that surfing and Pepper, a cool surfer girl, are his new passions.

Peter and Eric meet and form a new bond that is full of secrets and a creepy man named Baum threatens to expose Peter's secrets even though Baum has a notorious past of his own.

This was a good, not great, read. It exposes the secret that Australia and other countries harbored Nazis and members of the Nazi party after WWII where "few were hunted down and none were caught and put on trial." ( )