2.5⭐️ rounded up. While I had initially thought a WW2 setting in Belgium would be a good new perspective, the writing was very 2-dimensional, clunky and mostly void of emotion and description.

Without the detail and description as a whole it felt very surface level. To follow the interaction and dialogue, you didn’t know what the characters were really feeling most of the time, which made their conversation feel stilted or jump back and forth without any continuity, or just plain odd. You had to sort of infer what they were all feeling at any given moment. And the whole situation with Matteo and Lily was both confusing and felt petty and juvenile. Without that emotional context, it made it sound like she didn’t love Nik at all and was in a loveless marriage, but then it’s stated towards the end she did…?? Which then made her character super distasteful to me.

Also so many weird discrepancies or lack of context that felt unrealistic: Hannah was in the resistance in Germany for years but at the first opportunity shared every possible name and info to Lily. The carelessness of the ID situation, the lack of vetting for their members and complete lack of being covert, other careless or deliberate situations (so as not to spoil it) etc.

I wish I enjoyed this more as l have others of Ms Jennoff’s but I was not a fan.