The war is over, but the dying continues and the dead demand answers. It is 1919 and Amy and her friend Kitty travel to the wreckage of the battlefields to try and find the last resting places of Amy′s fiancé. Edward, and Kitty′s brother, John. John had been buried close to where he fell, but his grave has been lost, while Edward was reported missing, so Amy′s search is to find some witness of his final hours.

The story unfolds in different locations and times: the comparatively peaceful city of Cambridge in 1916 and the tentative beginnings of Amy and Edward′s relationship; France and Amy′s journey to try and find out what happened on the 17th of August 1918, aided by the mysterious Major Westbrook; a series of episodes in Edward′s war; and a burial party of Captain Mackenzie with a labour company of Chinese whose task is to find, exhume and possibly to identify bodies to lie in the new mass cemeteries.

All these different strands build up a picture of the war and what it did to men and women. How the gentle choir master Edward became a man who was good with a knuckle-knife on trench raids. How most of the British officers still found time to despise the Chinese men working for them, even as they relied on their stoicism and other support. How the legendary Colonel Rhodes could win the loyalty of his men, and still remain an enigma. Amy changes from a woman who is barely allowed out to visit a friend, to someone who will make her own way to a foreign country in the aftermath of a war. There are also hints and clues scattered through the book as to how the events of the 17th August played out, and the fallout from them afterwards.

This was a fascinating book which I found gripping, and difficult to step away from. The utter bleakness of the battlefields is painted in shades of unrelenting brown and grey, and the mud almost becomes another character in the book. The unravelling of the mystery is not a sudden reveal, but a gradual discovery like the identification of a decayed body. It is a book that communicates even more on a re-read as the knowledge of the conclusion gives more weight to seemingly throwaway sentences. I think this is a book that would be of interest to thriller readers and those interested in the First World War, but would also appeal to a wider audience.

I had a copy of this book early through Netgalley.

It is 1919 and the First World War may be over but now the dead need to be identified and laid to rest. Amy Vanneck loves Edward Hallam but he has been declared as missing in action. She is desperate to find him dead or alive and so travels to France.

A wonderful book with in depth characters and scenes or war torn France. A glimpse into the hell suffered and the great losses shared by many. Well worth reading.

Beautifully written story set between 1914 and 1919 with a young girls search for her sweetheart’s body in the war torn fields of France. The suspicion of a war crime investigated by a military police colonel seemingly offering her assistance and a captain in charge of searching for and naming casualties all play their part as the story moves backwards and forwards. A fascinating tale rich in graphic detail with the atmosphere of the battlefield hauntingly described, one can almost feel the horrendous conditions. This is a serious tale and highly recommended!

In this superb WW1 historical drama that goes back and forth in time, Philip Gray with his impressive research gives us a rare glimpse into the post-war abandoned battlefields and those army volunteers who carried out the soul destroying task of attempting to identify a few of the over 5oo,ooo dead soldiers, their bodies in their various states of putrid decay, through tags and other possessions. It is 1919, and co-ordinating one of these heroic operations in Northern France is Captain James Mackenzie, soldiering on in the face of a nightmare of hell, with its heavy toll on the sullen, withdrawn and resentful volunteers, he is driven by compassion to bring some form of closure for grieving relatives back home. It is a dangerous task too, as there are deadly booby traps that claim new war victims, when a woman, Amy Vanneck, arrives determined to find the body of her missing fiance, Captain Edward Haslem, of the 7th Manchesters, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes, missing presumed dead.

The privileged Amy is bearing a burden of guilt, the pacifist Edward, a Cambridge school music teacher, would never have joined the war effort if it wasn't for her, her rigid mother, Lady Constance, had refused to accept him as a suitable suitor, he was not of their social class. The least she can do is ensure his body is found and reburied, and she is going to need her nerves of steel to survive the obstacles in her path, this is no place for a woman, most witnesses are dead, information is scarce, not available, or non-existent. Aided by Mackenzie, she sifts her way through the contradictory evidence and army obsfuscation when it comes to an atrocity committed at Two Storm Wood where 13 victims are discovered murdered, Edward appears to be implicated and the possibility is raised that he may still be alive.

There are more murders as Amy becomes engaged in her own battlefield in the search for the truth, learning of the grim realities of the war, where the dangers come not only from the German enemy, but from within. The issues of mental health and shell shock affecting soldiers are described in detail, soldiers do whatever they need to do to fight and survive, such as taking drugs so they can carry out risky missions. Rules and regulations regarding the war are not always followed, army command will tolerate this and engage in cover ups, citing morale as their defence as they bury the truth. This is a riveting read, where the answers only start coming near the end, about the complex nature of violence, brutality and the crimes that can occur under the cover of war. A novel that is one of my favourite reads of the year, highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Two Storm Wood is billed as a historical thriller and whilst there is certainly a thriller element to it, it wasn’t the most compelling aspect of the book for me. In fact, I guessed a key part of the plot pretty early on thanks to some detail in the prologue.

For me, the key strength of the book was how it revealed the ‘debris’ of war, whether that’s material debris, such as abandoned military equipment or bombed out buildings, human debris such as the bodies (or remains of bodies) of fallen soldiers like those Captain Mackenzie’s battalion is tasked with recovering and identifying, or physical debris in the form of the damaged and scarred bodies of those who survived but were terribly injured.

And then there’s the psychological debris: the survivors traumatised by what they witnessed and what they were forced to do. If you’ve never considered just what close combat, such as carrying out a silent raid on an enemy trench, involves in reality, Two Storm Wood will leave you under no illusions. ‘An enemy who chose the bayonet, the knife or the club was an enemy who had lost touch with self-interest, the calculating instinct for self-preservation, an enemy devoted to the collective cause, unafraid to die.’ As the book reveals, often only drugs could provide the necessary impulse to carry out orders, to blank out the dreadful memories or to provide the strength to endure days spent in endless watchfulness.

Amy Vanneck encapsulates the grief of those whose siblings, spouses or loved ones never came back or whose fate remained unknown. Perhaps unusally given the times, she travels alone to the heart of the now abandoned battlefields searching for the truth about how her fiancé Edward Haslam died, or if indeed he did. As she edges closer to the truth, it becomes increasingly clear that ‘War is a contest of violence, not virtue’ and the cruelty of what one human being can do to another knows no bounds.

With its vivid battle scenes, Two Storm Wood conjured up pictures in my mind that I’m not sure I want to recall in a hurry. The book powerfully, and at times graphically, illustrates that ‘War poisons everything that it does not destroy’. It also features one of the most evil and ruthless fictional characters I’ve come across in a long time, a key ingredient for a really absorbing thriller.

I really enjoyed the historical aspects of this novel and found it to be really thrilling and engaging. I found the whole novel to be absolutely masterful... blown away by the characterisation and the descriptions that Gary used to describe the battlefield. I also loved the mystery and thriller aspects of the plot. One of the stand out novels of the year

Following the end of WW1, a young woman,Amy Vannock,goes to the French battlefields in the search of her fiancé who was presumed missing..
This is a very well researched book with harrowing scenes of life in the trenches during the war.
Many thanks to Netgalley and publishers for the opportunity to read this advanced copy. My opinions are my own

If you have read and enjoyed (difficult with some of the subject matter, I know) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulkes (an all time favourite of mine) then this might be for you.

Set in France in the aftermath of WW1, this is a love story /mystery thriller which captures the horror of war but also the tremendous relationships that can be born from it.

Maybe not as stylishly and warmly written as Birdsong but still ⭐⭐⭐⭐.

A darkly brooding atmospheric tale, tells of a young woman’s journey to France, shortly after WW1 to look for her fiancés body,

Whilst the writing is very good, unfortunately I struggled with pacing of the story and I found it a slow and drawn out read.

This is a great book set in the period just after the Armistice and before the Treaty of Versailles. A woman goes to France in an attempt to find her fiancé who has been reported as Missing. It's a very atmospheric and quite brutal story as it goes back to events in 1918 and overall it was an excellent read. But that final section was unnecessary and, for me, spoilt the overall enjoyment. With thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for an advanced copy of this title.

Thrilling and eerie WWI novel with a surprising strong female lead.

This book wasn't what I expected at all and I really enjoyed it. Having read more WWII historical fiction read I jumped at the opportunity to read and learn more about WWI but found this to be more of a thriller. It also helps you to understand a minor fraction of the fear that the men who fought on the battlefronts went through and gain an understanding of shell shock & PTSD - both how soldiers coped and how others saw them at the time.

Amy Vanneck leaves the safety of England when the war is over to find her fiancé's body so she can give him the grave he deserves.

As she manages to discover more information about his last known whereabouts she quickly realises not everything is as it seems.

thanks so much for early access to this ARC.

4+

Rare to find a book about the war that gives a different idea to how things went.
This tackles the aftermath of the war,and those left trying yo identify the bodies,a completely overwhelming task.
Throw into that a young woman looking for the body of her beloved,and a murder mystery set under two storm Wood,and you really have a cracking read.
I thought I'd read every book about the war I neeed to,but this proved its always worth reading another.
Strong female character,and army men that were loyal to the last.
It surprised me a few times too.
Nothing but positive thoughts on this book.

I loved this book. I have read a lot of books about the Great War, and it is refreshing to read something set in the period after the war. The author conjures up a real sense of a destroyed country, and people shattered by their experiences, and the storyline is both compelling and shocking. A great thriller, and one I will definitely be recommending.

*Many thanks to Philip Gray, Random House UK, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
The background of this novel is not so often mentioned in fiction: the effort to find, identify and bury thousands of soldiers who fell during the WW1. The author must have done incredible research drawing on all kinds of documents available, in my opinion. Some fragments are raw and disturbingly realistic. And so is the atmosphere, dense and claustrophobic. The only colours are colours of soil, uniforms and mud. The only brightness comes from memories, never from the present time.
The plot is intriguing, with well-developed dynamic characters, and the mystery that kept me interested till the end.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the pace of it and the different narrative perspectives.
This one was my first book by Philip Gray but it certainly won’t have been my last.

DNF @ 12%

Much as I wanted to enjoy this one - World War I, dark, brooding - I couldn't get into it at all, try as I did multiple times. The writing felt strangely inert, lacking in momentum, and the little that writer Philip Gray had managed to convey of the characters so far was not something that had me hooked in any way.

A real shame, especially after the start the book got off to.

Thanks, NetGalley and Vintage UK, for the ARC of the book.

Seriously, one of the best mysteries I've read recently.
Yes, I will admit that it gave a bit at the end, but the story is very strong. And then, I've read an ARC. There's a chance the end will be revised again before publication.

My experience as a reader is that historical mysteries are often a mixed bag. Most I've read lacked on the 'historical' side. Two Storm Wood by Phil Gray isn't the case. This novel is an incredibly well-research book and more than this. The research was skillfully used to create a setting that is alive and breathing. I often felt I was there, in the abandoned trenches, not just because of the tactile and sensorial impressions but also for the atmosphere. Gray creates a haunting place, and if occasionally he slips into a recognisable horror mode, that doesn't harm the historical accuracy at all.
I was also very impressed by the vividity of the military life in the trenches. Military life is always tricky to represent because it is so unique, specific, and even more so when we're talking about a historical experience. I never had a feeling that the author was gripping in the dark. The description of military life was so detailed that I never felt lost. This was true in both the sequences set during the war and those after it. The abandoned battlefields where teams of voluntaries searched for the fallen to give them a resting place and where families (and tourists) went to find their loved ones or to feel a thrill came alive on the page.
I loved it.

The mystery was impenetrable.
The story employs a non-linear plot that alternates sequences in the trenches in 1918 and the bulk of the story, set in 1919. I love non-linear plotlines. I think they are particularly effective for mysteries because it allows the reader to learn the story's details bit by bit and gradually connect them to the main plot. It was satisfying in this case because the 'truth' the main plot uncovered changed many times, and the vision into the past gradually allowed me to make up my own mind about what happened.
The investigation on the ground was presented in a very realistic way. The characters discovered details and information slowly, mostly talking to each other or working out things they learned. It helped that all the characters were very smart, which is something else I really appreciate.

And talking about the characters: they are all fantastic!
I cared about all for them, and it was very difficult to work out who was to trust and who was lying.
They are all carefully built, especially on a psychological level. I loved the discourse about mourning, shell shock, working out psychological damage and physical disfigurement. WWI was a terrible cultural shock for the people who lived through it, and this novel manages to get the feel through beautifully.
Amy Vanneck, who can be considered the protagonist (but all characters somehow felt protagonists), is an incredible heroine. In historical fiction, I often see women with too much of a modern attitude, who act as if they were living in the XXI century, not their time. Amy is definitely a rebellious woman - in her own way. A new woman, true to the period. She's not afraid to defy the social rules, especially those that don't have any sense after the upheaval of war, and still, she never feels out of place. She's always very aware of the social mores of her time, even when she decides to go against them - or at least to bend them. Honestly, this kind of handling of a historical character makes the message far stronger than just making her a XXI-century woman 'in disguise'.
The veterans are all great characters. The author is visibly interested in the damaging power of the experience of war. All his characters are damaged in one way or another. Some of them are clearly irreparably so, but for others, there is hope, and this too - I think - is historically accurate. All are so realistically built that I deeply cared about all of them, even the more ambiguous. Their humanity was what came through, their personal experiences creating compassion that didn't disappear even in the face of the most gruesome revelations.
There's a lot to love about this book, but I think the characters will be what will remain with me longer.

The only thing that slightly disappointed me was the ending. I found it a bit rush and left to chance, which contrasts with the bulk of the story. But as I said, I read an ARC, and it's possible that the end of the story in the published novel will be different. I hope so because it would make this novel even more unforgettable.

As I opened this book I thought I was going to read a 'normal' story set in the aftermath of WW1. I was very wrong!! Amy is on a quest to find out what has happened to her fiancé, Edward, but has almost resigned herself to the fact the 'missing in action' does mean that Edward was killed on the Western Front. However things are not what they seem & she embarks on an investigation of what actually happened on the day Edward went missing. This is then the start of what turns out to be a dangerous 'mission' with several twists & turns and a very impressive final twist!

I got Two Storm Woods by Philip Gray from NetGalley for a fair and honest review.

Two Storm Woods is set on the battlefields of World War I.

Even though the war is over British troops are still on the bombed-out fields of France, looking for and identifying soldiers by their remains, uniforms and possessions. All this with the help of Chinese workers.
Into to this world comes Amy Vanneck looking for her fiancé who went missing in the last summer of the war. All this with the help of Captain Mackenzie.

This is one of those historical novels that does the job of educating the reader, while supplying a great novel to read.

The reason for this Is that while we all see the war grave cemeteries, Two Storm Woods is based around, how the British Army went about finding the bodies that had been laying were they were some for the four years of the war.
While Philip Gray did not go into graphic into too much graphic detail, the descriptions he used does gives readers a clear understanding on what the bodies look and smell like.

As for the story itself I will not go to much detail, as the mystery of the novel is a large part of the story.

However, the story was as well written as the descriptive writing, with twist and turns throughout the book, as Philip Gray interwove historical information with the mystery element, with a number of twist and turns through the whole length of the novel.
One thing I should mention is that Two Storm Woods, narrative is told through a number of points of view as well as two timelines.
Though there was verry little difficulty telling whose perspective the story was told through or which timeline you were in.

All in all this made Phillp Gray’s Novel Two Storm Woods well worth you reading time.

Hellfire, this is seriously good! It is well researched, with accurate descriptions , not only of the horrors of trench warfare, but very sympathetic to the family members left in limbo, where are their loved ones? If reported missing, that doesn’t give closure, if dead, where has the body been buried, was there enough body to identify, is there a marked grave or was it left to rot on the battlefield.
This story is told via two timelines, pre and post World War One. Amy Vanneck is a young lady from a privileged background, who meets Edward Haslam, a music teacher. Despite being from opposite ends of the social scale, they fall in love and become engaged. Edward then gets the call to fight, and is later reported as missing in action. Amy decides to go to France, to find and bury his body.
The central emphasis is upon a body of men, who were tasked by the Directorate of Graves Registration, to scour the battlefields, looking for burial sites, then to exhume the bodies in order to rebury them in the cemeteries that have been newly created by the War Graves Commission.
Death and decay are constant companions in this thought provoking novel. We start with the men in the hospitals who are undergoing pioneering facial reconstruction for terrible wounds and disfigurements. The unpleasant and distasteful job of finding bodies and transporting them to the cemeteries, the sheer cruelty of war, that can leave men feeling hardly human, the various ways they cope with these feelings, alcohol, prostitutes and opiates, the cheapness of life, hardships and privations, no wonder these men hardly ever spoke of their experiences.
My father had two uncles who fought at Ypres, one was discharged with trench foot , one of which had to be amputated and the other returned home very briefly after the war and emigrated to Australia and no one heard from him again.
This is a brutally unflinching account of war, from a perspective that I hadn’t considered before. I admire the actions of wanting relatives to have a body to mourn, even if they couldn’t be returned home. Looking at all the hard work and effort that goes into the maintenance of war graves today, makes you feel that they were honoured in death, whilst being treated so harshly in war.
I admired all the knowledge that went into this novel. Like all good murder mysteries, there is a sense of unease underlying this story, the feeling that, could men be that heartless to each other, or was it the sheer effort that went into their survival made them act so contemptuous towards officers and their orders? A theme to be discussed further.
I will leave reviews to Goodreads and Amazon. I will recommend this to my local library when we are allowed to mix freely again. A five star read. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK, for my advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion.