Tamar is 430 pages long. It is a paperback book, which makes it lighter.  

Tamar is a young girl who inherits a box containing a series of clues and coded messages. Out of the past, another Tamar emerges, a man involved in the terrifying world of resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Holland half a century earlier. His story is about the daily fear and casual horror of the Second World War. Unravelling it transforms the young Tamar’s life. 

My first impression of the book was very intimidating because of the numerous pages. It is about secrecy, survival and passion. I thought that it would be an excellent read with plenty of action. But I was wrong: it was not an excellent read, it was rather bore-some. It was not for children 14+, but for adults. It kept talking about things they used to do in the olden days, something modern kids wouldn’t know about.

It was hard to adjust to the sudden change in time – it did that quite a lot. Some good bits about the book were that there were a lot of terrible horrors about the Second World War. For some young readers they will never understand what Mal Peet is talking about. For the older readers who have lived through a War, they will understand what he is talking about. 

I would give it a rating of 4 out of 10.