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WHAT I MOST RECENTLY FINISHED: Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal.
My primary response to this book is to say, in the words of Eddie Izzard, "People, you're British. Scale it down a bit." Or, more specifically, be a young-woman-with-a-mysterious-past novel OR an espionage-in-wartime novel. Being both is just a little much. Also, try to reduce the number of pages spent on your protagonists figuring out something the reader has already been told. And explain why your red herring was so herring-y (though in fairness, maybe you did and the explanation was so flat that I looked right past it.)
If you have a weakness for women-in-WWII stories, you might find this a pleasant way to pass a few hours, but you'll also probably know as much (or more) about the setting than the author does and thus spend time sighing and saying YES I KNOW ABOUT ANDERSON SHELTERS CAN WE MOVE ON.
...I'm still going to read the next book in the series, though, because it's titled Princess Elizabeth's Spy. And because the mysterious-past thread does get cleared up in this volume, so I can hope the next will be more focused.
My primary response to this book is to say, in the words of Eddie Izzard, "People, you're British. Scale it down a bit." Or, more specifically, be a young-woman-with-a-mysterious-past novel OR an espionage-in-wartime novel. Being both is just a little much. Also, try to reduce the number of pages spent on your protagonists figuring out something the reader has already been told. And explain why your red herring was so herring-y (though in fairness, maybe you did and the explanation was so flat that I looked right past it.)
If you have a weakness for women-in-WWII stories, you might find this a pleasant way to pass a few hours, but you'll also probably know as much (or more) about the setting than the author does and thus spend time sighing and saying YES I KNOW ABOUT ANDERSON SHELTERS CAN WE MOVE ON.
...I'm still going to read the next book in the series, though, because it's titled Princess Elizabeth's Spy. And because the mysterious-past thread does get cleared up in this volume, so I can hope the next will be more focused.
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