The premise of this book sounded fascinating and its supposed to be a book based on true events. After reading the book I realized that while there was some truth to the synopsis, it wasn't entirely what the book was about. The premise was that zoo owners in Poland took Jews in and offered them refuge in their zoo, in the cages among the animals. The story was a true story so the storytelling was strange and choppy, at least to me, and I gave it the benefit of doubt and assumed it can only be because it was constrained by a real life story. Now that might just be a personal taste for me as I found I really didn't enjoy "In the Garden of Beasts" for the same reasons. The author over emphasized mundane events making the truly extraordinary moments seem less important. It might have been a specific choice to emphasize the main character's perspective, but I found it interfered with the narrative. 
 The story is about Antonina Zabinski and her family during World War II Poland. It was interesting in that I had never read a story of what the Polish were doing during the war. It turns out that there was a lot going on in Poland and that it was here that the internment camps started. Antonina's family ran the Warsaw Zoo, a zoo that by all accounts of the book was spectacular. But as war began to brew and Poland came under attack, the zoo became a refuge for the many Jews that were being hunted down. 
 The story has its strongest moments when it recreated the feeling of entrapment that the Jews felt and more pointedly the entrapment that the Polish felt by the usurpation of their country by Hitler. Antonina's husband Jan did not support the war or the way Jews were being treated and yet he was eventually drafted to fight for the Germans and Antonina's torment during this time became a huge part of the second half of the book. 
 The author tried to make it sound that Jan was a stand up guy, but the more you read, the more you understood that Jan had very little respect for Antonina and her thoughts. He was sexist and perhaps it was just the way it was then, but it made sympathy for him to be less than desired. 
 After all was said and done the book was about Antonina, she was a woman who endured a lot of trauma because of the war, her haven, the zoo lost almost all its animals, to fire, gunshots, and bombs. The perfect world she had created for herself was shattered irreparably and there was an element of deep sorrow you felt for her. Yet after reading the book I feel her story could have been shorter. I'm glad I read the book, but I can't say that I would ever recommend it.