History That Hurts: What Reader Reviews Reveal About The History They Never Taught Us

What happens when readers encounter history they were never taught—and can’t look away from? An exploration of memory, silence, and what painful history asks of us once we know it.

Many important stories from World War II never made it into our textbooks.

One account is of the Ponary Massacre in the Baltic country of Lithuania. Here, over 100,000 people— 72,000 of them Jews—were murdered in what has come to be known as the Holocaust by Bullets. But what makes the Baltic Holocaust so important is that neighbors turned on neighbors. Before the concentration camps became the more systematic method of genocide, Jews were being rounded up and shot at the hands of their fellow countrymen.

These events are documented. They are verified. And yet most readers, even those who have spent years immersed in World War II history, have never encountered them.

When I wrote From Malice to Ashes, I knew I was asking readers to sit with painful material. History that hurts. The kind of story that makes you set the book down and stare at the wall for a while before picking it back up. What I didn’t know was how readers would respond.

Would they turn away? Would the weight of it be too much?

A few months ago, another author told me she had compiled all of her book reviews and fed them into an AI tool to look for patterns. She said it helped her understand what was landing with readers and what wasn’t. So I decided to try it myself.

I gathered the 4 and 5 star reviews from Amazon and Goodreads and started looking for themes. What I found taught me something important. Not just about how readers experienced this particular book, but about what happens when people encounter history that hurts. History they were never taught. History that demands something of them.

Here’s what I learned.

No Idea

I assumed readers would comment most on the characters, or the writing style, or even the audiobook’s strong narration by Matt Armstrong. And they did. But the phrase that appeared most often was some variation of “I had no idea.”

"I had no idea about the Ponary Massacre."

"I had no idea what happened in the Baltics."

"I had no idea Lithuania played such a pivotal role in how the Holocaust started."

These weren’t casual readers. Many identified themselves as devoted fans of World War II historical fiction. Several mentioned they had read dozens of books set during this period. Yet this corner of history was completely new to them.

One reviewer had read the book and happened to visit Lithuania shortly thereafter. She noted how difficult it was to get people to talk about what happened in the Ponary Forest. Another, a self-described “Holocaust aficionado,” said this was the first book she had encountered on the subject. A third wrote that she thought she had “heard all the stories from WWII” until she read this one.

This pattern told me something I had suspected but couldn’t prove. Readers love to learn. They love to read historical fiction to expand their understanding of the world. Because I like researching and writing about little-known but important historical events, I’m not always sure whether what I’m uncovering is truly unfamiliar to most readers. It’s not until I’ve put in the time to research, write and then get my work published that I am able to know if what I’m writing about is not only unique, but relevant and meaningful.

It wasn’t until this book was published that I learned that the Ponary Massacre and the broader Baltic Holocaust remain genuinely unknown to most readers, even those who seek out this history. The gap in our collective knowledge is real. Many important and significant events in history often get lost because of neglect, and not necessarily because they are not important. This is the history we were never taught.

Readers Described a Physical Experience

The second and most surprising pattern that emerged was how readers described the physical effects of reading this book.

I don’t think of my work as lyrical or elegant. My focus has always been on clarity, accuracy, and telling the story honestly. Which is why I find it amusing that readers report having physical experiences while reading my book.   

One reviewer wrote that he stayed in her parked car for more than an hour just to keep listening to the audiobook. Another said she was compelled to keep reading into the “wee hours of the morning,” despite knowing she had to get up in a few hours. Several mentioned needing to take breaks to process what they were reading. More than a few admitted they cried.

What struck me was the tension they described. The content was difficult, sometimes unbearable. But they couldn’t stop. One reviewer captured it perfectly when she wrote that she “can’t say I enjoyed this book” because of the horrific events it chronicled, but she “had a hard time putting it down.”

This is what it means to read history that hurts. You don’t consume it the way you consume a romcom or a regency romance novel. Sometimes you have to endure it. To wrestle with it. And if the book is compelling enough, you’ll keep going anyway because something inside you needs to know what happened.

I was thrilled to see that several reviewers specifically mentioned “the thread of hope” running through the narrative that kept them going. I admit, this was intentional on my part, and I was relieved to see it was working. So many books, movies, and social media posts are sad and depressing. We don’t need more sadness. I believe we need to be inspired by history to help us keep going. To endure through tragedy to find happiness on the other end. When writing about an atrocity, I don’t want to let the darkness become so relentless that readers give up. There has to be a reason to stay.

The Importance of Chapter Notes & Historical Sources

I learned something valuable from reader feedback on my previous book in this series, For Malice and Mercy.

In that book, I included end-of-chapter notes that explained the historical sources behind the narrative. The reviews were strongly opinionated. Most readers loved having the notes right there, connecting the fiction to documented history as they read. But a vocal minority felt just as strongly in the opposite direction. Their biggest criticism was that the notes “took them out of the narrative.” They wanted to stay immersed in the story and found the interruption jarring.

As the creation of that audiobook happened months after receiving many reader reviews, I wanted to avoid any pushback from audiobook listeners. I made a decision not to include the chapter notes in the audiobook version of that book. Yet some listeners complained that the historical notes were left out.

Lesson learned.

For this book I tried a different approach. I moved all the historical notes to the back of the book, hoping this would satisfy both camps. Readers who wanted to stay immersed could do so. Those who wanted the historical context could find it waiting for them at the end.

I also fought to include those notes in every format. Physical book, ebook, and audiobook. These notes added almost an hour to the final runtime, bringing the total audiobook to about 12.5 hours. It was a risk. I wondered if listeners would complain about the notes or find them tedious.

Reviewer after reviewer mentioned they loved having the historical notes included. Some mentioned the documentation as a factor in their experience. One wrote that seeing exactly where the evidence came from “added a whole other layer of authenticity.” Another said the detailed notes served as “testimony and warning.” A third actually fact-checked my account of the escape tunnel’s discovery and was pleased to find it accurate.

This confirmed something I suspected but hadn’t fully tested. When you’re asking readers to trust you with painful history, showing your work matters. The line between historical fiction and fabrication can feel thin. The book’s “back matter” is how you prove you’ve done the research. Readers notice, and it changes how they receive the story.

The lesson for me was clear. Listen to the feedback, make adjustments, but don’t abandon the commitment to historical documentation. Most readers care about history and will appreciate having easy access to learn more about what matters to them.

They Connected It To Current Events

Perhaps the most striking pattern was how frequently reviewers drew lines of connection between 1944 and the present day.

I did not prompt this. There is nothing in the book that directly references contemporary politics. Yet reader after reader made the connection on their own.

One wrote that “in these times, we need to really think about making certain individuals ‘the other’ and how that can bring out the worst hatred in people.” Another said she found herself “heartbroken as I thought through the parallels to our current events in the world.” A third quoted George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

This is why I write historical fiction. Not to deliver lectures about the present, but to let readers make those connections themselves. When history is told honestly and without an overt agenda, the relevance becomes self-evident.

I’ve learned to trust readers. They don’t need to be told what to think. They just need access to reliable information so they can arrive at their own conclusion. I’ve learned that readers are quite adept at making connections between their own lives and the historical narratives I write about.

History that hurts doesn’t stay in the past. That’s what makes it hurt.

What Didn’t Work

Not every element landed for every reader. Some found the opening slow, some complained that the beginning was too frenetic. Some had trouble tracking characters at first, a few felt the prose was uneven in places. Several audiobook listeners wished for dual narration, feeling that a single male voice for both male and female characters pulled them out of emotional moments.

These observations were helpful. They give me something concrete to consider for the next book. And they remind me that no novel works perfectly for every reader. That’s the nature of the form.

Key Takeaways Any Writer Can Use

The exercise of analyzing these reviews taught me more than I expected. It showed me that the “I had no idea” response is not a failure of marketing. It’s the whole point. The type of history I write about has been undertold, and readers are hungry for it.

It showed me that going to the effort to provide documentation builds trust, and that trust allows readers to stay with difficult material.

And it showed me that although I’m writing fiction, when I focus on telling the historical narrative as truthfully as possible, readers are eager to engage with it.

I’m grateful to every reader who took the time to share their reviews. Writing is solitary work. Hearing how the book landed is a gift.

Remembering history like this carries a responsibility. The cost of forgetting is not abstract; it shows itself when cruelty is repeated, when neighbors become enemies, and when suffering is dismissed as someone else’s problem. If these stories matter, it’s because they ask something of us after the last page is turned. Readers do not simply finish a book like this and move on unchanged. They carry forward an awareness, a discomfort, and a deeper understanding of how easily ordinary people can be pulled into extraordinary harm.

History that hurts stays with us for a reason. Remembering is a choice. Silence is a choice too.