I really enjoyed this warmhearted wartime novel which contained a wonderful cast of characters. Set in a small village in the Jura region of France it is about the resistance activities of a group of friends, twoof whom owned a hotel which straddled the border of France and Switzerland.
What struck me was how young all the main protagonists were and how bravely they endured the occupation, fighting back and saving as many of the persecuted as they could.
There were many heart in your mouth moments and of course sadness due to the situation they were in but also a blossoming love story and extreme fortitude in the face of adversity..
At the end of the book there was even a look to the future and a hint of how these brave fighters would feel now that their lives were no longer in danger and they had to go back to their normal lives. PTSD was not mentioned but I could imagine many would suffer from it after all they had seen and endured.
It is a subject many authors have tackled, a subject that is always interesting to read about and I think Ava Miller succeeded in writing about this period in history in a realistic way, a book that has obviously been well researched.
The characters were well rounded and believable and I was really rooting for Eloise, Marie , Julien and Andre, hoping they would survive the war and as I mentioned earlier their extreme youth was very impactful- I felt the same when I visited the Normandy war graves last year in France- how young all the soldiers were.
I definitely recommend this book and thank NetGalley and the publishers for my advance copy.