This was the May choice for my distance book club. I won’t lie…I did not vote for this one. So take this review with that grain of salt in mind (though, also know that my opinion was shared across the group, so it may not be all personal bias). In any case, for a number of reasons, I am feeling the need to break from WW2 literature for quite some time. It feels, to me, as if the prolific number of books coming out on this time period/subject is really moving into the gratuitous. There is very little, I feel, that there is left to cover, as far as exploring the atrocities of that time. And there are many others that are less known about/sympathized with and many that are, in fact, currently happening, so something could actually be done about them. I don’t know, perhaps this is just me, but those are just my feels – the genre is overdone and leaning towards the voyeuristic now.

Anyways, this book takes place in WW2 era Britain and France, and then immediately post-WW2 era in the United States. It’s told from 3 perspectives. Eleanor, a Polish immigrant to England who is charged with starting/leading a program for female field agents in occupied Europe. Marie, a British citizen who is recruited into Eleanor’s program and trained in spy-like tactics and radio operations before being deployed to France. Grace, an American who husband died during the war and who is now working in New York and trying to reframe her life. Grace finds a suitcase in Grand Central Station that has a bunch of women’s photographs in it, one of them Marie’s, and, after finding out that the suitcase belonged to Eleanor, but that Eleanor can no longer claim it/answer questions about it, sets out to “solve the mystery” of who the girls are and what happened to them during the war.

I feel like there was definitely some promise to this premise, based on its female operative perspective and such, but (and here is where to bear in mind my personal bias against the plot in the first place), I think it fell drastically short of what it could have been. First, the writing itself was quite poor. It was very surface-level, telling not showing, and the number of repetitive inner monologues from each character’s narration was grating (and unnecessary). Also, despite that repetition of thought processes, the characters then repeated acted in ways that completely contradicted their inner thoughts…over and over and over. For example, Marie was constantly worrying over abandoning her daughter and if she was doing the right thing and staying alive to return to her daughter, etc. and then every time she was presented with a choice, she chose the option that would be least likely to lead to that safe reunion (in many cases, against direct training/orders/common sense). It bordered on ridiculous and the unbelievability of it was a major part of why I wasn’t into this book. In fact, the reality of the entire situation was questionable. Like, not that women could be field operatives or anything like that, but the actual structure of the story and plot points, like Grace and her “man interest” being able to find their way into classified files in the Pentagon without clearance. Like, come on… There were a number of other major coincidences and “too easy” moments, as well as too many predictable moments. Last, and really, biggest: the insta-love. OMG, how implausible can you get? Grace literally can only think about how rude/scary Vesper is and then, in the snap of her fingers, she’s choosing him over (possibly) her daughter? And Vesper is all like “I’ll never forget long my family.” And “I love you.” In the same breath. And in the present day, Grace and her dude. It was better, at least, but I still did not feel it. Basically, I was completely uninvested in either one, which really didn’t help me get into the story, as those were 2/3 of the perspectives. And even though I objectively liked the way Grace makes her decisions for herself in the end, I subjectively couldn’t, because everything leading up to it rang so false for me.

The one good thing that I would say about the entire story is that the “mystery” building was well done. I felt a growing tension as Eleanor and Marie did, and was truly compelled, in Grace’s present-day story, to get to the end and figure out the reveal. And then…there wasn’t really a reveal. Now, as far as the “realistic-ness” of that, I bought it completely. The choices of the government totally make/made sense under the circumstances and really Eleanor’s reaction to it all is what seemed unreal to me – it was war, people die, they all knew what they signed up for, and they were nowhere near the only casualties. I totally understand mourning and perhaps even self-blame, but just…that’s life during war and there are never “good” decisions under those circumstances, only better-ish ones, with competing negative consequences weighted against each other. Maybe I’m being callous. But it bugged me. So even the one piece that I felt like was the saving grace of the novel really ended up, at least for me, not being that at all. To be fair, I did appreciate that the “big thing” (and even some of the smaller things) that the female operatives were working on in Grace’s group was so small, in the greater scheme. That their missions were small disruptions, instead of one big “save the day” type event...that, at least, felt realistic to me. Oh, and the audiobook narrators were on point. So there’s that.

Bottom line, I would totally have been more into reading about Grace’s boss and his work with refugees from Europe coming into the US than anything else that happened in this book. That tiny piece of this story was by far the most interesting and compelling. I feel bad about this review, because I completely respect an author’s time/effort in writing and research, but I just cannot in good conscious recommend this one. So, I will not be going out of my way to share this anywhere else, but I feel that it needs to be recorded, in the same way that I always record positive reviews – it’s fair and true to my reactions.