An unexpected delight! I thought this story was going to be predominantly a tale from the war however it was mostly set in the present day with flashbacks through the form of diary recordings to World War 2.

Anna is bereaved of her Italian mother (Ines) and decides to travel to Italy to find out more about her family history given some of the snapshots Ines provided in her later life.

As part of Ines' Will, Anna is bequeathed the sum of £50,000 and also some old documents belonging to her parents written in Italian and she uses the money to travel to the region Ines grew up to make some sense of the past and Ines' reference to the harbouring of a member of the opposition during the war which was punishable by death. This leads to the diary entries that follow Anna's parents marriage which was sorrowful and truly affected by the war.

Anna stays in a family guesthouse, making friends with Teresa and Francesco (siblings) whilst also utilising Francesco to decipher the letters and diary recordings Ines has left behind. This is where the history aspect comes in which was not touched on as frequently as I'd expected as Francesco types up the translated version in stages but it still made for fascinating, and sometimes horrifying, reading. Francesco and Anna also visit some of the places that are referred to in Ines' diary recordings which was a nice 'then and now' touch. I liked the snippets of Italian used throughout as it made me feel like I was learning some of their beautiful language.

A really sad book due to the content but the ending was fitting and the book was very sensitively written.

My many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for providing me with this advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review.