I know at the bottom of my heart that this book is going to stay with me for such a long time.

This was my first Waters book. and this thing has been sitting on my shelf for YEARS. I didn't know much about her writing at all at the time, but picked it off a charity shop shelf. "ooh, this is the woman who wrote that lesbian book with the sex!" fifteen year old me thought. "now THIS is another book I can add to my bookshelf that doesn't look the slightest bit gay but I will know the truth without even needing to hide it in that secret back shelf next to my L word dvds."
I also discovered that the thing was signed by the author, and none of the staff had picked up on it, so I handed oxfam my £2 and off I went, deciding that if having this piece of homosexual memorabilia ever became too much for me, I could fob it off on ebay and make a bit of money. Years passed and here we are today. yikes.

I'll get the criticism out of the way. This book wasn't perfect, even though I do think Waters has some better books up her sleeve or at very least has the potential. I do also think that not everyone will have the same experience with this work. it is very heavily character driven, the tension incredibly slow burning, and can feel like a slow read. BUT. The work that can be put into understanding the characters allows for such true relationships to be formed between the reader and the pages, resulting in feelings of horrendous empathy for all involved. I say horrendous because I cannot believe how much I felt the emotions of some of these characters at times. I genuinely had moments where I felt like I was sick or bleeding. That takes talent.

a few things I loved about this book:
- The amount of research that went into this book was incredible.
- Every single character was so well thought out, fully fleshed and developed. even minor characters such as frazer and even Alec I absolutely loved.
- not everything is revealed. Indeed the true order of events makes itself clear and you get an overall picture, but little gaps are left for the reader to imagine what happened at certain points in the character's lives without making you feel frustrated. this is the best book to use if you wanted to write some sort of fanfiction.
- The narrative structure was so clever and worked SO WELL. I can imagine so many writers not pulling off what waters achieved.
- Just everything about how women were portrayed tbh. such a human portrayal of ACCURATE female characters in war time (yes, ladies in the war also got their periods).
- I actually learned something about the time it was set in. It wasn't a generic war story but something incredibly unique. still a very plausible story which historically speaking COULD have possibly happened.

my only regret with this book was the timing I read it. a lot of this book was very hard for me, firstly associating the book with exam stress. Then after my exams were over I picked this up again to cheer me up on a bad day, queue page to be one of the 3 most miserable scenes in the whole book. After another break, I picked it up on a train journey to visit my parents to leave my home in manchester for a while after the horrible incident that had just happened that week; Queue the most incredibly detailed bombing scene you will ever read. despite this, I did get over all these problems in the end, And I already want to reread it from the beginning now that I know everything that is to happen!! I found myself flicking back quite a few times while reading this to see how things matched up!