Really fascinating premise. It’s natural to want to work a problem backwards and try to figure out clues to what you missed, or what’s really important, only Jen does it for real. By halfway thru I had figured out what was basically going on and liked how all the pieces finally fell into place to flesh it out.

I thought it was great introducing what mothers are always worried about - am I screwing up my kid, am I doing enough? And really exploring that in a hindsight sort of way. Also how sometimes the best scenario is a little grey and not so easy to define because it’s not perfect. Really enjoyed it.

I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. It took awhile for me to get into it, the first part was very slow and scattered. After about halfway thru I felt better about it, started to like Casey a little more but it still just felt really all over the place to me.

I was really conflicted about this one.

For the positive, I’ve read about the 6888th before and was looking forward to fleshing out more of the history and little-told story of Black women serving in WW2. This book did that well, explaining a little more detail of the history than what I read before, and gave a really good look at the racism these women sadly faced. I think I would find it really hard to come back to the US after seeing such a lack of segregation and a lesser amount of racism overseas, but it’s commendable the way so many of those black women and men who came back used their experiences to push forward the Civil Rights Movement. The Bronx Slave Market was a new piece of information to me as well, and as awful as it was, I am glad to have learned of it.

I also enjoyed the look at female friendship the women in their battalion had, and it was portrayed well. Always a favorite focal point for me.

What I did not care for, was first, some of the writing style being very narrative, and at times, almost like a documentary or non-fiction book. I get that the author was trying to convey a lot of history as well as a fictional story, but it felt a bit dry or slow at times.

Mostly though, I was really annoyed at the change of Charity Adams’ - who was a very real person - character being fictionalized as a lesbian when she was not. And not just mentioned here and there as a gay person, but most of the Charity POV was primarily focused on her feelings for her friend/love interest. It’s a fictional book - it doesn’t make any sense to alter a *real* person like that just to introduce a gay perspective when there were plenty of fully fictional characters at the author’s disposal if that’s what she wanted to do, as stated in her Author’s Note. If you wouldn’t change a real historical person’s race, nationality, or gender, why would you change her sexual orientation for no real reason? It felt sensationalized, false and wrong to her memory to change her on a whim and with that much focused content if that’s not who she was.

I enjoyed the mix of historical WW2 and present day, along with the suspense of trying to recover a stolen piece of art by unethical means. I did find it a little hard to swallow that journalists are the ones doing all the investigative, recovery, and legal footwork rather than some leg of law enforcement. And that Margaux is that obviously psychopathic and yet still so public, getting away with it and not really trying to hide a whole lot. Maybe I missed something in the book that explained why (in a real not-made-up way) or something I just couldn’t quite separate that.

Not a fan. Really disliked all the characters - they were self-centered and enormously dysfunctional but in oh-well way. For the most part no one trying to be change any of it or better, just accepting it and continuing - a parent essentially abandoning her kids to do what she wants, illegal trading being passed off as everyone else’s fault (and his family also excusing it), chasing after a boyfriend that clearly doesn’t care for her but instead “one-upping” him in what she’s doing to try to make him jealous and not saying a thing about him hanging with his ex, a 20s/30s daughter wining while constantly calling her absentee mother mommy, people cheating on each other but still hanging out…? awful. Kevin is the only one that was remotely ok to me.

Also don’t like the writing style at all. It’s mostly all a narrative, like you’re watching everything from the outside. I won’t be reading any of the rest in the series.