Annelies by David R.Gillham

Publisher: Viking, PenguinRandomHouse
On Sale Date: January 15th 2019
Pages: 480

(review contains spoilers) What would have happened if Anne Frank had survived the holocaust? This is the starting point of Annelies by David R. Gillham. 
The story starts in 1945, after Anne (at that point sixteen years old) has returned in liberated Amsterdam and is reunited with her father Pim (Otto Frank). She is in grief because she has lost her mother and sister. She finds it difficult to start her life over again, as she is haunted by the scary memories of everything her family has experienced when they where in hiding in the backbuilding of her father's company on the Prinsengracht and surivor's gult. She even finds it hard to see the purpose and goal of going to school again. Her diary is lost, and her dreams of becoming a writer seem to have vanished. 

She tries though to pick up her life bit by bit though, with working beside school in her father's Opekta office and later on in the second hand bookshop of her father's friend Mr. Nussbaum. Otto Frank tries to pick up life as it was again, and finds a new wive, Dassah, who he marries later on in the book. This results in a lot of difficulties with Anne, who is seeing this as some kind of a 'replacement' of her mother. 
Anne gets a boyfriend to though, who she meets in the warehouses of Opekta, and this leads to her first kiss. But then rumor has it that her boyfriend's father was on the Nazi side in the war.  Her diary comes above the surface when Pim confesses he had it all the time, but it was too painfull for him to even touch it, and he doubts that it will make a good book, which is Anne's dream The story takes us from Amsterdam and later on to New York, where Anne starts her study at Barnard, where she comes eye to eye with Bep, one of the helpers again, who has something that lies heavy on her heart to confess to Anne. And, in the end, what everyone hoped for, Anne becomes a writer.

With Anne Frank as a main character and a different retelling of her life, you have to be carefull and handle it with care and grace to prevent offending anyone. 
I think the author did a great job with this. He truly did his research on Anne's life and stayed to the actual facts as much as possible, only to imagine what happened if Anne's life took a different turn for the better after Bergen-Belsen. As I am Dutch myself and know Amsterdam a littlebit, I can say that the author put the right Dutch words and centences in the right places, as he let Anne and Otto and others speak some Dutch and he also adds some in a more explanatory way. And all the Amsterdam facts where also spot on! The story of Anne's life he created was also impressive, and somehow, I could imagine Anne doing exactly so, as moving to New York in the end. Her actions and feelings where also very realistic, and I loved how the author worked out the father-daughter bond between Anne and Otto, which was just beautiful. It is totally different then Anne's tragic real life and death, but this her story with, even though there is sadness because the loss of her mother and sister, the somewhat better ending everyone wishes she have had.