Once We Were Sisters

By: Ann Bennett

Narrated by: Rosalind Lailey

Totally heartbreaking and binge-worthy World War 2 fiction

Elise isn’t the same as her father. She’s like a sister to us. She’ll know what to do to keep us safe. She would never betray us…

Paris, 1940. Shops are being boarded up, Jewish children are loaded onto buses and eighteen-year-old Elise’s heart beats hard as she runs down the cobbled streets under the shadow of swastikas. She hates her father with all her heart: he is working with the Nazis and has forbidden her to be friends with Myriam and Salomé, the Goldman sisters who are closer to her than her own family.

Elise will do anything to help the girls she loves as sisters, including sharing her father’s secret business. Every day she creeps out to their apartment, avoiding the cold-eyed soldiers who stalk the streets. But in trying to save them, will she bring terrible danger to their door?

Years later, newly pregnant Jeanne stares at the photograph of three young girls on the beach. She recognises her mother Elise in the centre of the picture, but who does her mother have her arms around?

Jeanne feels such love for the tiny new life inside her and feels desperate to connect with the mother who has always shut her out. Could finding these lost sisters, laughing and vibrant in the crumpled black and white photo, help Jeanne understand her mother and lay the ghosts of the past to rest?

A beautiful and deeply moving story about love and friendship and the bond between women in a time of fear and darkness. Fans of The Midwife of Auschwitz and The Nightingale will fall in love with this heartbreaking, hopeful listen.

©2026 Ann Bennett (P)2026 Bookouture, an imprint of Storyfire Ltd.

Great book! Ann's Best Yet and I think I've read them all!

Great characters, story line and mystery. Totally captivating. My only desire would be to have a narrator with a French accent rather than a British accent. But totally enjoyay!