Inspiring and heart wrenching. I loved the strategy in survival that the chess-playing lended the story, and how much the women’s friendships were necessary to each other’s survival. The revenge point of view being the motivation for living was sad in some respects but entirely understandable.

Beautiful portrayal of the love of books and how they allow people to escape or find hope and encouragement. Any book lover can identify with this one easily. And how so many people supported and gave of themselves to each other in tragedy. I do wish they would have fleshed out more of Grace’s relationship or letters with George. It felt a little missing and could have really added to the story to build on that.

Fun story with the period recipes and working thru those cooking obstacles. Enjoyed learning about the WW2 rationing in this story and sort of a making the best of it situation with the competition. Always love a book that pulls in great women’s friendships and supporting each other as well.

The second half was pretty interesting. Sort of crime-corruption-thriller meets historical fiction in Savannah. But it sure did take a long time to get there. I struggled getting thru the first half a lot - and granted this isn’t my typical genre - but I’ve been to Savannah and live in the south and love learning about the history of it all so that’s why I picked it.

The historical factor, albeit not fully true but fluidly based on true events, was very intriguing. I will say when I’ve visited Savannah it just had this weird heavy, sad feeling to the city. And learning about a lot of this history here and in other books, I would venture to say there’s a lot of sorrow that was built into the foundation of the city to make it pretty appropriate.

This was an…odd…book. I liked the premise of finding and treasuring lost things but beyond the weird confusion I felt in the storyline, it took an odd turn when it all the sudden started talking about ghosts without a bit of the abnormality of it, or waiting for the punchline of irony that never came. Apparently ghosts and haunted houses are just no big deal and run of the mill to the characters??

There was some decent British humor and I liked that there was a very thoughtful character with Down Syndrome portrayed, and that Laura, one of main characters, had to struggle to find her purpose and her motivation after a series of bad choices and blows. But the book itself was a bit difficult for me to find context for in the way it was written. It kept bouncing to Eunice without much understanding of why - and obviously that was revealed at the end but for most of the book it just felt arbitrary. And the stories of the lost things, for most of the book I was trying to figure out whether they were the real actual stories of the things or whether it was the made up stories that Anthony wrote. The book did a poor job of presenting that in my opinion. You found out in the end but it would not have hurt the story to explain that in the process.

Overall it just felt fairly confusing to me. Interesting but confusing.

Thanks to Netgalley for the copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I thought it was a great book and well written. I felt like there was a little bit of character whiplash at the end with how one of the characters went from one attitude and persona to just switching gears extremely quickly (trying not to spoil it) and choosing the opposite, but it was a good story with some interesting twists.