Not the least concession was made to the fact that this book was not set in the modern US. Just think, this is similar to a blend of High School Musical and the SS marching down the street in the same plot. The disconnect between history and character reaction is gaping.

This story reads like a modern American teenager throwing hussy fits when nothing goes her way, only in a Blitz setting. Acting at cross purposes just as the Luftwaffe rains down its terrible destruction, the sisters are cruelly separated, and their lives are transformed.Īmerican authors should really just stick to American fiction. But even as fifteen-year-old Emmy Downtree and her much younger sister Julia find refuge in a charming Cotswold cottage, Emmy’s burning ambition to return to the city and apprentice with a fashion designer pits her against Julia’s profound need for her sister’s presence. As Hitler wages an unprecedented war against London’s civilian population, hundreds of thousands of children are evacuated to foster homes in the rural countryside. What Kendra receives from Isabel is both a gift and a burden-one that will test her convictions and her heart.ġ940s, England. Young American scholar Kendra Van Zant, eager to pursue her vision of a perfect life, interviews Isabel McFarland just when the elderly woman is ready to give up secrets about the war that she has kept for decades.beginning with who she really is. The author of A Bridge Across the Ocean and The Last Year of the War journeys from the present day to World War II England, as two sisters are separated by the chaos of wartime.Ĭurrent day, Oxford, England.

Secrets of a charmed life