Alexandra Wickham is 23 when England enters World War II. Desperate to help her country, she volunteers with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry and starts driving ambulances and lorries. Her French and German language skills catch the attention of another branch of service – a branch that trains people to become spies. Soon Alex is being sent beyond enemy lines and in dangerous missions. But she can’t tell anyone – not her family or the fighter pilot she falls in love with. When the war is over, Alex thinks her days of spying are behind her until her husband becomes a diplomat and MI6 comes knocking at her door. Alex’s husband’s job takes them all over the world, to India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Russia, and Washington, DC. Alex portrays herself as just the diplomat’s wife, all the while sending information back to England.
This book was interesting. It spans across decades, practically all of Alex’s life. We first meet Alex when she is a young woman. The book follows her life and ends when she is a grandmother whose granddaughters are the same age as when we met Alex.
I really enjoyed the plot of the book. Alex is smart and determined and may have been a little too perfect, but that’s okay. There is a lot of history and adventure in the book. The first part of the book takes place during WWII so we get a lot of information about England during the war. Later, Alex and her husband live in India during the time it was gaining its independence and they also live in Russia during the Cold War.
The thing is, because this book spans so many years, it felt like instead of being immersed in a story, that someone was just telling a story to me. There was so much “telling” and not much “showing”. There’s not a lot of detail or depth in the story. We are told that Alex was awarded two medals for her service during WWII but we don’t know what for. We know she went on a lot of missions but we only read about two or three. After the war, Alex and her husband move around a lot due to his job as a diplomat and they spend four years in each country but each location covers about one chapter in the book. I felt like a lot of time was spent telling us what their house looked like in each country but we were never really told what they actually did while they were there (except for go to parties).
This book is mainly historical fiction. There is a love story between Alex and her husband but it is not the focus of the story. The book also touches on family, love for one’s country, and war. I did think this was a fairly quick read, possibly because of all the “telling”?
I definitely liked this book much more than the last Danielle Steel novel I read. (You can read my review for Fall From Grace here) I’m not going to call this a guilty pleasure because I have no guilt in reading this book. Plus, according to Wikipedia, Danielle Steel is the bestselling author alive so she has to be doing something right.
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