Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr

The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr

The Goddess of Warsaw

A Novel

by Lisa Barr

  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • May 2024, 368 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

The Goddess Of Warsaw is an enthralling tale of a legendary Hollywood screen goddess with a dark secret about her life in the Warsaw Ghetto. When the famous actress is threatened by someone from her past, she must put her skills into play to protect herself, her illustrious career, and those she loves, then and now.  

Los Angeles, 2005. Sienna Hayes, Hollywood's latest It Girl, has ambitions to work behind the camera. When she meets Lena Browning, the enormously mysterious and famous Golden Age movie star, Sienna sees her big break. She wants to direct a picture about Lena's life—but the legendary actor's murky past turns out to be even darker than Sienna dreamed. Before she was a Living Legend, Lena Browning was Bina Blonski, a Polish Jew whose life and family were destroyed by the Nazis.

Warsaw, 1943. A member of the city's Jewish elite, Bina Blonski and her husband, Jakub, are imprisoned in the ghastly, cramped ghetto along with the rest of Warsaw's surviving Jews. Determined to fight back against the brutal Nazis, the beautiful, blonde Aryan-looking Bina becomes a spy, gaining information and stealing weapons outside the ghetto to protect her fellow Jews. But her dangerous circumstances grow complicated when she falls in love with Aleksander, an ally in resistance—and Jakub's brother. While Lena accomplishes amazing feats of bravery, she sacrifices much in the process.

Over a decade after escaping the horrors of the ghetto, Bina, now known as Lena, rises to fame in Hollywood. Yet she cannot help but be reminded of her old life and hungers for revenge against the Nazis who escaped justice after the war. Her power and fame as a movie star offer Lena the chance to right the past's wrongs ... and perhaps even find the happy ending she never had.

A gripping page-turner of one of history's most heroic uprisings and an actress whose personal war never ends, The Goddess Of Warsaw is filled with secrets, lies, twists and turns, and a burning pursuit of justice no matter the cost.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. Goddess is filled with empowered female characters: Bina, Zelda, Anna, Sienna. How does each woman use her "power" both in her own life and in the plot of the book?
  2. Revenge is a powerful theme threading through the novel. Can one take vengeance too far?
  3. Lena justifies her violent past to the young actress Sienna Hayes, maintaining that she is an avenger and not a psychopath. "Survival always comes down to a choice, never a compromise." Do you believe this?
  4. There's a difference between revenge and redemption – and yet they often go together. Can you achieve redemption without extracting revenge?
  5. In the Warsaw Ghetto and in many arenas in life, women are the true heroes. What are the examples in our...
Please be aware that this discussion may contain spoilers!

See what our members are saying about this book in our Community Forum.

What are you reading this week? (11-28-2024)
I am currently listening to Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers but it is not capturing my attention, so I plan to begin listening to either The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr or The Story Catcher by Evie Woods.
-Sunny

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"The moving latest from Barr ... . Chillingly realistic, raising the novel's emotional stakes to excruciating heights. Fans of WWII historical fiction won't want to miss this." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[Barr] writes the best heroines. You will be rooting for [Bina] and you will be guessing until the last page." —Today Show

"With strong female characters and telling historical details, Barr's powerful novel of Bina's evolution to Golden Age movie star will resonate with historical fiction fans." —Washington Post

"Utterly gripping, The Goddess of Warsaw is a transformative and immersive story so powerful and captivating that I could not put it down. Rarely does a protagonist leap off the page and win over the heart like the unforgettable Bina Blonski. Truly one of the best books I've read." —Liv Constantine, bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish

"Lisa Barr's The Goddess of Warsaw is a riveting, heartbreaking story of survival and vengeance. This brilliantly executed excavation of one woman's quest to overcome crimes of the past is an absolute must-read. Glamorous, glorious, and gut-wrenching, I couldn't put it down." —Danielle Trussoni, New York Times bestselling author of Angelology and The Puzzle Master

"Lisa Barr's new historical fiction, The Goddess of Warsaw, gifts the reader with jaw-dropping moments worthy of a Tarantino film, a story that could not be more timely, and a heroine whose ferocity and valor knows no bounds. Bina Blonski is forced to lose and remake her identity time and time again, both to survive the Warsaw Ghetto and to carry out her secret mission years later as a Hollywood actress. Unrelentingly immersive and suspenseful to the very end, The Goddess of Warsaw spins a haunting tale of the cost of survival, sacrifice, and the long-denied secrets of the past." —Natalie Jenner, author of the instant international bestseller The Jane Austen Society

This information about The Goddess of Warsaw was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

JoreneJ

A woman warrior in Warsaw
This book follows the life of "Bina" an aspiring actress turned assassin and resistance fighter in Poland during the Nazi occupation. Fast forward and Bina takes on a new identify in the US as a successful movie star, only to discover that Nazism has spread to America. A riveting story!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Lisa Barr

Lisa Barr is the New York Times bestselling author of Woman on Fire, The Unbreakables, and the award-winning historical thriller Fugitive Colors. She has served as an editor for The Jerusalem Post, managing editor of Today's Chicago Woman and Moment magazine, and as an editor and reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. She has appeared on Good Morning America and Today for her work as an author, journalist, and blogger. Actress Sharon Stone is set to produce and star in the film adaptation of Woman on Fire. 

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more historical fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    Prophet Song
    by Paul Lynch
    Paul Lynch's 2023 Booker Prize–winning Prophet Song is a speedboat of a novel that hurtles...
  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Story Collector
by Evie Woods
From the international bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop!
Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Who Said...

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.