Mischling * * * by Affinity Konar is at once horrific and brimming with life and hope, even with humor in the most unexpected of places.

Brown-eyed and fair-haired, 12 year-old twins Pearl and Stasha Zagorski were often mistaken for "mischling" (mixed-blood, persons deemed to have both Aryan and Jewish ancestry) according to the Nuremberg Laws.

Arriving at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather in the fall of 1944, they were immediately plucked for the experimental population of twins known as Mengele's Zoo. While Stasha was bold, impulsive, and given to storytelling; Pearl was more restrained and observant. Narrating in alternative chapters, the twins realized early on to survive, they would have to "divide the responsibilities of living between (them) - Stasha would take the funny, the future, the bad, (Pearl) would take the sad, the past, the good". Little did they know how that would become their destiny.

When Pearl disappeared during a winter concert orchestrated by Mengele, Stasha grieved for her twin, but remained hopeful that Pearl lived. As the camp was liberated by the Red Army, Stasha escaped the death march with Feliks, a boy bent on vengeance for his own lost twin. Together, they endured starvation and unspeakable war devastation, encountered hostile villagers, Jewish and resistance fighters, sustained only by the hope that Mengele might be captured and brought to justice.

Readalikes: Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly, and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

* * * = 3 starred reviews