Review – Hidden Among the Stars

Melanie Dobson, award-winning author of more than fifteen historical romance, suspense and time-slip novels, releases “Hidden Among the Stars” September 4. This time her multifaceted story is one of romance and suspense wrapped inside a mystery that unites past and present with an extraordinary story of castles, lost dreams and hidden treasures. The picturesque castle of Herr and Frau Dornbach and their seventeen-year-old son Max sets against the backdrop of Austria’s beautiful Lake Hallstatt. The time is 1938 when “Hitler’s troops swept into Vienna” and the Gestapo terrorized the Jewish population and robbed them of their future dreams. The hidden treasures were recorded in code on the back page of a German book titled, Bambi: A Life in the Woods, a book found by a young woman almost a century later in America. With alternating past and present chapters, the story opens in Austria on the Dornbach estate in the spring of 1938. It’s late in the evening when Annika, the caretaker’s daughter was awakened by someone sneaking “by the cottage she and her father shared in the woods.” She was alarmed because the family only came for Christmas. Annika went out and hid in the trees only to find Max, her one-time playmate, friend and new romantic interest “looking straight at her.” Seventeen-year-old Max, still a year away from conscription into the Third Reich, had been stunned by the Nazi’s takeover of the Jewish people, their finances and lands, many of whom were childhood friends. Determined to help he hid many of their precious treasures in a secret place on the Dornbach estate for when the insanity of the Third Reich ended. Then he recorded where to find the treasures in a cryptic code inside a children’s book. Callie Randall, blogger and co-owner of the “Magic Balloon Bookshop” found the book eighty years later and saw what appeared to be a coded message in the back of the book and listed it on the store’s website in the “lost and found” section. She couldn’t know the life-changing events she had just unleashed or how they would lead to travel, new relationships and the solving of a here-to-fore unsolvable mystery. Thus, begins a story of faith that captures Hitler’s reign of Austrian terror and heartache with a story that highlights the cost of loyalty, friendship and love. But, it’s also a romantic tale of castles, lost dreams and hidden treasures wrapped inside a captivating and suspenseful mystery complete with an unpredictable, unforeseen and unexpected ending. Not a book to miss!