Mention World War and I will pick up the book automatically. It’s one of my favourite subjects in historical fiction, add this with Mandy Robotham and I was sold. I really loved her debut ‘Woman at War’. I wanted to see if a book set in Venice, Italy would make for an interesting change, as it’s so often from the French perspective. I’m quite a fan of dual timelines as long as they add something to the story - for the most part I’m not sure that this happened during Luisa’s 2017 chapters. These chapters often disrupted the flow of the book and I think without so many of them, I would have finished this a lot faster than I did.

Stella Jilani a member of the Resistance in Venice, Italy, who’s working within Nazi Headquarters in order to pass on information to the resistance. The tension behind the words is something I really felt during these chapters of the book and never knowing if she would be found by the suspicious commander and face the dire consequences. Often WW2 fiction is centred on the atrocities against the jews and although there is a brief mention of torture, the author chooses not to focus on this a refreshing change I thought. The author really does the research for her books and I really appreciate this.

Overall I really loved reading this but I do wish it had been longer. I can’t say too much without spoilers. Pick this up if you love historical fiction, tension, gorgeous scene setting and you want to root for a character until the bitter end!!! Like I did with Stella!!

I adore Steve Cavanagh’s writing, after having read Thirteen (although that book did fall a bit flat for me) I was excited to read this one!!

This was so brilliantly and cleverly put together and I was second-guessing myself all the way through! Even if I did know which direction this was going to take towards the end, it still managed to keep me wanting more.

“She” POV I loved!! Genius idea and created even more tension. It’s like he was drip-feeding you small clues throughout which I found so clever!!

There were a couple of elements that I was left wondering why, but without giving too much away I couldn’t discuss them here!

I for one will be back wanting more from Eddie Flynn!!

This is just the cutest book - it’s my first Sapphic novel and I genuinely loved it, fell in love with the premise and thought it was a brilliant idea executed well.

I’m known to like a good rom-com now and again, I mean they were featured at every sleepover so I feel like they’ve been ingrained into my psyche. Another reason I like a rom-com is I know just what to expect and they’re a comfort watch most of the time. This book gave me all of those feels and more.

TW: Dementia is also a storyline handled in this book and very delicately and sensitively too.

This would make a great film and I hope that more sapphic films are made and I’ll be reading more sapphic novels in the future.

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for allowing me to read this arc.

These are only my personal opinions.

First of all, I want to start by saying I did like this book (at times), but I couldn’t connect with it. I can’t put my finger totally on why this was, but I think it had a lot to do with the weird pace.

The premise of this book had a lot of promise and I was eager to start, however it took me a while to finish. I didn’t have that “urge” I usually do when reading this genre.

This book is Sci-Fi which I think was the main reason that I didn’t have a big connection with it. It’s not my go-to genre and maybe I need to explore that genre more in the future as certain aspects I found very clever.

Full review to come once I’ve processed