THE SILENT UNSEEN

As World War II winds to a close, Soviets, Poles, and Ukrainians struggle for the upper hand.

Sixteen-year-old Maria, recently escaped from a German slave labor camp, and 17-year-old Kostya, a reluctant member of the UPA (Ukrainian nationalist partisans), are separately trying to return to their mutual hometown of Bród in Poland as the Red Army takes over from the German occupiers in August 1944. They’re on opposite sides: The UPA and the Polish resistance have been working against each other throughout the German occupation. When Maria stumbles upon members of the Soviet secret police about to kill an injured Kostya, she shoots them and saves Kostya’s life before learning of his background. Then, while trying to find him medical care, she encounters a group of Polish resistance fighters led by her brother, Tomek, whom she’d thought dead. After that, the plot gets a little confusing. This novel, like McCrina’s previous book, Traitor (2020), explores an interesting and relatively unexplored side of history, and the sentence-level writing is compelling. However, the author sacrifices clarity in her effort to produce excitement: She doesn’t provide enough background or write in a way that readers can easily keep track of what’s going on—and without fully understanding the action, it’s difficult to care very much about the characters.

Could have been excellent but misses the mark.