About the book
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old Jewish girl, is arrested by the French police in the middle of the night, along with her mother and father. Desperate to protect her younger brother, she locks him in a cupboard and promises to come back for him as soon as she can.
Paris, May 2002: Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked to write about the 60th anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv’–the infamous day in 1942 when French police rounded up thousands of Jewish men, women and children, in order to send them to concentration camps. Sarah’s Key is the poignant story of two families, forever linked and haunted by one of the darkest days in France’s past. In this emotionally intense, page-turning novel, Tatiana de Rosnay reveals the guilt brought on by long-buried secrets and the damage that the truth can inflict when they finally come unravelled.
Reviewed by Parish Pump Reading Group:
We all thoroughly enjoyed this book. Excellent story, a really gripping plot. All looked forward to picking up the book each day. Story is told by two different people – both very interesting and based on true facts.
Star rating: ****
Hampshire Library Service 
Review by Waterside Phoenix
An excellent book on various levels. For once the current wide use of alternating time based stories was accepted by all the members of the group as being a practical way of introducing readers to historical facts about the Geramn occupation of France during WW2 and of the little spoken involvement of the French police in the final solution of the Jewish problem. The characters are believable although in some cases distrubing in their behaviour. There is plenty of material for discussion and the group agreed that once started it was a difficult book to put down even if the ending was a little bit contrived.
Star rating: ****
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Review by Elson Readers
We all loved it. Beautifully written. One of our best books ever.
**** 4 stars
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Review from Fareham 5:30 Redaing group
We all enjoyed parts of this book – the historical setting of the Vel d’Hiver atrocity seen through a child’s eyes. The writing was atmospheric but not literay. We liked the way this was interspersed with Julia’s modern-day story – but this stopped half-way through, and the book lost a lot after that. We wanted to continue to find out about Sarah’s life. There was a lot of discussion about the ethics of her telling the story to Sarah’s son. We felt the ending was contrived. The book raised a lot of discussion. ***
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