This book had so much potential, but I struggled to stay engaged because the author kept straying from the storyline. She'd go off on tangents, mention characters by first name that she hadn't mentioned in 70 pages, and skim over heart-rending elements of the story of Warsaw. The book just wasn't all it could have been, which is, I think, an injustice to Antonina and all of the people she saved.

This an amazing narrative nonfiction book. It takes place in Poland during the German occupation. Jan and Antonia own a zoo in Warsaw and use it to help Jews safely get out of Germany. The writing is a perfect mixture of narrative and history. I recommend it to all my nonfiction, memoir and history loving friends. It was a fantastic read.

I really wanted to like this book way more than I did. It was recommended to me by a good friend since I enjoy reading historical fiction but I just couldn't get into it. I forced myself to keep reading it since I can't quit books for some weird reason. I am glad I stuck with it so I know what happened to the family but it just wasn't my favorite.

Surprisingly, I just had to put this book down. While I appreciated the story and wanted to like the book, but it was too slow for me.

This was just okay. Perhaps I'm used to wartime stories/memoirs that are more intense, but this was a very light story in comparison. The author spent A LOT of time describing the flora and fauna and animals, and the people seemed to be secondary. It almost felt like it was just a lovely little guest house where people happened to stop by; you don't really get the gravity of the situation nor understand the actual hardships they endured. I hope the movie does better.

I've been struggling for almost 2 weeks to finish this. It's a super interesting story, but it's sooo hard to read. It's a story of a zookeeper and his family, but also interspersed with all of of these other general facts about Warsaw at the time and it's just so choppy and hard to read. I would have rather a historical fiction novel written about the family, or just finding a better way to tie everything together. It seems 1 in 3 chapters deal with the family and I'm having such a hard time staying interested. That said, this feels super bratty to complain about a book about the Holocaust...but other people have done it better, so I just give up.

By all accounts, I should have adored this book. But I didn't. It was historically based. It had animals (a whole zoo!). It offered a different take on WWII. The main characters, the Zabinski's, used their decimated zoo to smuggle Jewish people to safety - in Poland, right under the Nazi's noses!

However, it was a massive struggle to get this one finished. I thought about stopping many times, but held out hope that it would get better. It never did. I thought at first that maybe it was because I listened to the audiobook vs. reading the actual book, but I think I would have struggled even with a hard copy.

I felt like Ackerman bounced around WAY too much - the fact that almost all the zoo's animals were killed in bombing raids was all but glossed over, but I felt like she described the hidden wall compartments for an hour. Lots of historical info - too much at times. I wish she had focused more on the personal stories of the people who came through the zoo. This was done at times, but not nearly as much as long-winded narratives were given about the cold winter or Antonina's phlebitis. It just felt overwhelmingly random at times, which is disappointing. All the elements of a great novel were here, but the construction of the story was too unorganized to create any sustained interest for me.

The Zookeeper's Wife is a wonderfully detailed, real life account of the dangers of living in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Ackerman, in true naturalist form, pulls you in and places you smack-dab in the middle of this war-torn city.

Not my favorite, mostly because of the way Ackerman chose to write the story. She went off on a lot of tangents and could have presented a truly amazing war story in a more compelling manner.

Allison selected.