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Sidekick Super Review: Under the Same Stars (2025) by Libba Bray
- Oct 23
- 8 min read
The Basics
Page Length: 467
Audiobook Length: ~16.5 hours
Grade Level: 8+
Goodreads Score: 4.10 out of 5
Buy it HERE
Setting: Germany 1940s, Berlin 1980s, New York City 2020
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery
Topics: WWII, Resistance, Berlin Wall, Punk culture, COVID, Memory, Secrets, Friendship, Justice, Identity
Plot: This book switches back and forth between three main storylines.
Storyline 1: Hanna and Sophie are best friends growing up in rural Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. As mandatory members of the Hitler Youth, they’re forced into marches, trained to become good wives and mothers to serve the Third Reich, and witness the suffering of their families, friends, and neighbors. Their one escape is the forest—and the Bridegroom’s Oak, a magical tree said to bring lovers together through secret letters. What starts as a romantic hope turns into something far greater. As the world around them darkens, the tree becomes a quiet, powerful tool of resistance.
Storyline 2: Jenny, an American teenager from Dallas, is uprooted and moved to Berlin in 1980. She quickly realizes that East and West Berlin are worlds apart—divided by a massive wall and a government that thrives on control and fear. Through Lena, a bold punk rebel, Jenni is introduced to the underground resistance scene. She joins a punk band, speaks out against the GDR, and begins to embrace her queerness—something she had always hidden. This journey transforms her: she finds her voice, her identity, and her courage.
Storyline 3: Miles is facing senior year in Covid-era NYC—alone. One parent is a frontline worker; the other is stuck overseas due to lockdowns. His best friend, Chloe, hasn’t spoken to him in months after an awkward romantic moment strained their friendship. He spends his days attending Zoom school and eating Doritos—until Chloe suddenly calls with a mystery. She’s discovered a strange disappearance from 1943: two girls and a boy who vanished on the winter solstice in Germany. Together, they dust off their true-crime podcast skills and begin an investigation. Solving the mystery reignites their friendship—and gives Miles the purpose and hope he needs to step up and create change, even in a time that feels hopeless.
Themes: History repeating itself, resistance to authoritarianism, the cost of truth, fear and propaganda + the courage to resist it, embracing identity and using your voice, grief, friendship, the transformative power of love
You might like this book if you like:
David Bowie's classic song "Heroes"
books that have different characters POVs/swap storylines and time periods
books like The Book Thief, We Are Not Free, Resistance, or 28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto.
shows like We Were the Lucky Ones, All the Light We Cannot See (also a great YA book), The Passing Bells, Transatlantic.
movies like White Bird (also a fantastic middle grade book), The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Swing Kids, The Devil's Arithmetic, Sophie Scholl--The Final Days
Other books written by this author: The Diviners series, A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle series)
Teaching Under the Same Stars As a Full-Class Unit
Content: (check the link at the top for the Common Sense Media page for more info. You can find much more detail about content warnings there.)
Language: There is a fair amount of mature language throughout the book. It's not constant or overwhelming, but it does appear periodically across all three timelines.
Sexual Content: All main characters experience romantic moments—first kisses, references to time spent intimately together, and expressions of romantic and sexual identity. One character becomes pregnant. A sexual encounter between two girls is portrayed with more detail than just implication, though it is handled with care and emotional nuance.
Violence/Scariness: There are numerous scenes of violence across all three storylines. Across the book, there are attacks, threats, and some character deaths, often tied to resistance efforts and political unrest.
In the 1940s storyline, German soldiers commit acts of violence against citizens of Kleinwald.
In the 1980s, Stasi officers threaten and harm characters attempting to travel between East and West Berlin.
In 2020 New York, teenagers face police aggression during protests.
Substance Use: Characters in the 1940s and 1980s drink alcohol and smoke. Some teens are shown at a party where smoking and drinking occur. There are references to a woman using diet pills and a teen taking prescribed anxiety medication.
Class Novel-ability: Because of some content considerations, I don’t think this book would work well as a full-class novel. However, it’s such a beautiful, interesting, and compelling read—one that teenagers would absolutely love. If it can be incorporated into a book club or literature circle unit for older students, it definitely should be!
The Star Qualities
This novel weaves together three powerful storylines across different time periods.
The first follows two best friends—teenage girls living in a Nazi-occupied town in Germany during the 1940s.
The second centers on a closeted lesbian teenager navigating life in Berlin at the height of the GDR and the Berlin Wall.
The third takes place in 2020 NYC, where two teens try to survive their senior year during the peak of the Covid pandemic.
These three stories intertwine in the most beautiful and satisfying way. Throughout, there are cleverly placed clues—repeated phrases, lyrics, and symbols—that hint at the deeper connections between the narratives. It’s like a puzzle, and when the pieces come together, it’s magic.
The novel features a variety of deeply relatable narrators: boys and girls, queer and straight characters, from different cultures and time periods. This broad representation lends itself to a wide appeal and offers meaningful points of connection for a diverse range of readers. Students can find themselves—or someone very different from them—and empathize across lines of identity and history.
This is a book about teen heroes, meant for teen heroes! The themes in Under the Same Stars are rich and relevant. Above all, the novel honors the power of youth to create real, lasting change. It’s a beautiful story with even more beautiful ideas at its core. Each main character takes bold action—sometimes quiet, sometimes loud—that creates change in their world. They are change-makers, resisters, and truth-tellers. They're flawed, brave, and incredibly real. There’s something powerful about reading a book where young people are the heroes. Not "the future"—but the present. This novel reminds readers that teens aren’t naïve or powerless. They’re strong, capable, and often the ones willing to stand up when others won’t. This book is a celebration of that truth.
Book Talk Read Aloud Section
If you have the physical book, read the first chapter, pages 3-5.
If you don't, read pages 3-5 in the Kindle reading sample here.
"Reading Like a Writer" Mentor Texts
This passage is full of craft. There are short sentence fragments and quick dialogue lines, plus stylistic touches like ellipses, semicolons, and commas. The sensory details make you feel the urgency. Together with the word choice, all of this builds a really strong sense of tension and a fearful, somber mood.
This passage is another great "crafty" example. The short, fragmented sentences and repetition build serious tension, while the paragraph breaks and pacing keep you on edge. The stream-of-consciousness style makes it feel like the narrator is thinking out loud, and the vague, mysterious imagery keeps readers curious and creates suspense. Altogether, it creates a dreamlike, haunting mood that pulls you right into the story.
Sentences for Combining and Imitation
Sentence sets for combining:
The heels of Sophie’s dress shoes sank into the soft, cold earth with each step, slowing her pace. (Under the Same Stars, p. 1)
The heels of Sophie's dress shoes sank.
They sank into the earth.
The earth was soft and cold.
Each step slowed her pace.
"And they are on the top floor; if the Gestapo comes, they'll have time to hide their work before anyone makes it up the five flights of steep, winding stairs." (p. 268)
They are on the top floor.
If the Gestapo comes, they will have time.
They will have time to hide their work.
They will have time before anyone makes it up the stairs.
The stairs are steep and winding.
"They’ve run through their favorite topics–video games, Marvel movies, the Brooklyn Nets–and have studiously avoided the scary ones–COVID, the hospital, the patients she’s lost.” (p. 349)
They've run through their favorite topics.
They've run through video games, Marvel movies, and the Brooklyn Nets.
They've studiously avoided the scary ones.
They've avoided COVID, the hospital, and the patients she's lost.
It is a gritty graffiti-painted fairy tale amid the rubble of Kreuzberg and in the dank basement clubs where bands thrash all night and ears ring afterward for days." (p. 249)
It is gritty.
It is graffiti-painted.
It is a fairy tale.
The fairy tale is amid the rubble of Kreuzberg.
It is in the dank basement clubs.
The clubs where bands thrash all night.
The clubs where ears ring afterward for days.
Sentences for Imitation:
This book is filled with the most inspirational—quote-wall-worthy—sentences. Here’s a collection of the ones that stuck with me. These are the kinds of lines that linger in your mind long after you’ve finished reading. Taken together, they capture the overall vibe of the book: it’s deep, haunting, and beautiful. Some also showcase repetition, and clever, stylistic punctuation choices. Every one of them is worth imitating. These would make great model sentences for an assignment where students write their own lines around a shared theme.
"Love can be resistance; resistance, love." (p. 458)
"Don't die in the waiting room of the future." (p. 68)
"It seemed as if the world allowed pretty girls to do and say things for which they punished ordinary girls." (p. 42)
"That is a great magic: to know that we are not alone." (p. 227)
"It makes him wonder which things that seem important now, moments and friends and regrets that loom large, will be diminished or amplified by time." (p. 346)
“There’s a theory that every seven years, our cells turn over and replace themselves. So maybe you become a completely new person in time. Like, change is inevitable. Literally encoded into our cells." (p. 343)
“That is the thing about words; they can have different meanings. Words matter. The right ones can open a door or a heart. The wrong ones can seal your fate.” (p. 379)
"It is at this moment that Sophie feels a shift in the world, all of her cells colliding, rearranging, shaping themselves with purpose. As if she has been stumbling through the fog of dreams and has just awakened into a sharp, clear morning. As if she had never been alive until now." (p. 248)
"On these walls are the faces of resistance . . . resistance takes many forms . . . against oppression and injustice, but love is also resistance, the family you choose, the identity you claim, the bravery to see the world as it is and to love it enough that you will to make it the world that it can be, to make it better, fairer, kinder . . . " (p 460)
Used this book in your classroom? Tell us how in the comments!
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