Simple, no frills prose and story telling that occasionally had me thinking I was reading a middle grade novel.  The sexual violence content, however, put it squarely outside of that age group.  By the end of the book I found, to my surprise, that I cared about the characters in a way I hadn't at the beginning - it had sort of crept up on me - and the final chapters were very moving. The book has also taught me about a particular event in WWII that I knew nothing about (which is part of the reason I love historical fiction so much).