If you’ve been around here a little while, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I love a good World War II story, especially one about a real woman who did some bold things during that time. This is one of those stories, and it comes from a historian.

To Die Beautiful [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM] by Buzzy Jackson is the story of Hannie Schaft. Hannie was a member of the Dutch Resistance in Holland during the war. While she herself wasn’t Jewish, she had two close friends who were, so part of her story involves helping them. But Hannie did so much more. She became known as ‘The Girl With The Red Hair’ and was wanted by the Nazis because of her successful missions against them, including assassinations. This novel touches on some of them, but as you’ll learn in the author’s note, there is so much more to what she did.

Buzzy is a historian and has previously written non-fiction books. She started out with the same intention for telling Hannie’s story, but found a massive gap in details from Hannie’s voice, which led to her filling in the gaps with fiction. It’s a beautiful blend of facts and imagination that helps us get to know this bold woman of the past.

The writing in this book is so daggum beautiful. Buzzy really paints a picture of what things looked like, as well as the emotions of such a time. It’s intense, but so well done. I tend to read books like this slowly due to the weight of the subject matter, but I flew through this in just a couple days (It’s quite the chunker! Lol) and immediately started talking to bookstore customers about it. Sorry not sorry.

Bonus points for me: the redhead jokes and comments were so freaking relatable. I don’t know how Buzzy, who is blonde, captured that slice of reality so well, but she did and I loved it.

One random recommendation though: don’t look Hannie up going into the book. I was part-way through and thought I would look up a picture of her since she was real, only to have the Google results put a graphic up at the top of the results with a major spoiler. Yes, it’s fact, but it took away a smidge of the magic of the story because the ending was spoiled.

Either way, do yourself a favor and grab To Die Beautiful.

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