Reviews and Comments

A very easy read to the point of being bland. Despite being set in World War II, it is very light and sweet. The characters are nice enough but can come across shallow and like plot devices. Hedy being Jewish matters not, it's barely mentioned and even ignores it at times. It feels like there was very little care taken or research done about Jewish people, which is incredibly unfortunate.

I found the book to be fine, middle of the road in terms of enjoyment. I liked the family dynamics much more than the relationship between Callum and Sephy, which could be very tedious to read through at times. I also found the pacing to be erratic almost, going from one scene being dragged on through chapters to massive time skips with very little context that there had been one. I appreciated the exploration of racism but found that it could be surface level in its analysis of it.

That was certainly a book I read...

The plot was uninteresting, and the twist made the first two thirds irrelevant. The writing was repetitive in the literal sense. The characters were flat and mostly annoying. Didn't enjoy this book at all.

There are elements of a good book here. The discussions on identity and family are good. The mystery is fine, a little obvious who the main villain actually is, but still entertaining enough.

I didn't enjoy the prose, found it almost too flowery. The main character isn't enjoyable, despite her assertions that she is strong and smart, she comes across incredibly naive to the point of unbelievably. Other characters felt very one note, especially the main character's husband. There were also plot threads that were mostly relegated to the background, despite being prominent at the beginning. I felt that the portrayal of trauma wasn't done well, feeling very surface level.

Disappointed because the premise is incredibly interesting and not written about enough.

A pretty good ending to the series. Do feel the villains could have been better, with all the build up from the previous books.

Typical young adult dystopian novel. The author mentions it was written in 2012 and then heavily edited before it was released in 2021.

I found the prose to a little simple but not bad. The characterisation for everyone but the POV character wasn't as good as it could've been.

Didn't realise that this was part of a series, wish they'd made it more obvious on the cover or at the start. I'm not too lost, but it does make references to other events that I should probably recognise from previous books. Oh, well.

I found the book a bit of a slog to get through, I felt that the exposition was long and unnecessary at times and the characters to be unlikeable but not in an entertaining way. However, I thought the prose was well written and very beautiful. You could tell the author did a lot of research too.

I liked the prose and enjoyed the characters, who I found to be well written and thought-out. I found the narrative to be slow, slightly repetitive, and the ending to be heavy on exposition.

I don't buy into conspiracy theories, as the majority of them are antisemitic drivel, but I believe this - to the point I wouldn't even consider it a theory, just a conspiracy. It has an incredible amount of research behind it, making it an amazing piece of investigative journalism, though it was repetitive and heavy-handed at times. Bryant backs up as many allegations as he can with evidence and corroboration, and when he can't will point it out.

It definitely left me feeling despondent at the end, and with very little hope the case will be resolved properly but trying to be optimistic, maybe one day the victims can be vindicated.

I've never been this despondent after reading a book.