Synopsis

England, 1940. Can Maggie keep her family – and her secret – safe? An emotional and heartbreaking wartime novel for fans of Diney Costeloe, Dilly Court and Mandy Robotham.

When Maggie’s new job takes her from bombed-out London to grand Snowden Hall in the Cotswolds she’s apprehensive but determined to do her bit for the war effort. She’s also keeping a secret, one she knows would turn opinion against her. Her mother is German: Maggie is related to the enemy.

Then her evacuee sister sends her a worrying letter, missing the code they agreed Violet would use to confirm everything was well, and Maggie’s heart sinks. Violet is miles away; how can she get to her in the middle of a war? Worse, her mother, arrested for her nationality, is now missing, and Maggie has no idea where she is.

As a secret project at Snowden Hall risks revealing Maggie’s German side, she becomes even more determined to protect her family. Can she find a way to get to her sister? And will she ever find out where her mother has been taken?

My thoughts

There are a lot of romance books set in World War 2, and this is another one, however in this one we meet Maggie, a bank employee whose mother is German, her mother has been arrested and she does not know where she is being held, her sister has been evacuted to a farm, and the bank she works for is being relocated to the countryside.

It is a beautiful story which easily conveys the fear Maggie has of anyone finding out her mother is German and that she can speak the language, we follow her from a shy girl to a confident young woment who eventually helps the war effort by using her language skills as a translator, warm and heartening, lots of social commemtary of the time, a feel good book that is easy to read and leaves a warm fuzzy feeling at the end