Category: HF Reading Challenge

#BookReview #BlogTour The Soldier’s Child by Tetyana Denford @bookouture

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Soldier’s Child by Tetyana Denford. My thanks to Jess at Bookouture for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Robin at Robin Loves Reading, Emma at Shaz’s Book Blog and Julia at Christian Bookaholic.

About the Book

“He is mine, he is ours,” she whispers, as the tears in her eyes gather in the corners. She holds her baby tightly, her breath coming out in ragged gasps, knowing that she needs to give her child to her brother forever. But will she ever be able to tell her child the truth about who his real mother is?

Ukraine, 1941 . War has ripped Katya ’s country and heart in two. When two soldiers knock down her door and force her into a truck, she knows deep down that this might be the last time she ever sees home. As she is driven away to a labour camp, she looks out the tiny window at the barren winter landscape and thinks only of her son Alexander , who she was forced to leave behind and may never see again…

Decades later, Katya has tried to rebuild her life after the horrors of war, but she still clings on to the hope of being reunited with her precious son. But whilst Katya has stayed in Ukraine, little does she know that her son moved his family to America years before in search of a better life.

Can she find peace without knowing what happened to him? Will Katya ever be able to reunite with Alexander and tell the truth about who she is? Or will they be defeated by the war that has already taken so much from them?

Format: eARC (350 pages) Publisher: Bookouture
Publication date: 10th July 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Soldier’s Child on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK 
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The Soldier’s Child is an incredibly emotional and dramatic story which although a work of fiction is based partly on events in the author’s own family. The story is narrated from two main points of view – Katya, and her son, Alexander (the soldier’s child of the title). However, at certain points we also witness events from the perspective of Sasha (the soldier of the title) and Alexander’s son, Evgen.

Although a lot of the events take place during WW2 and focus on the dreadful experiences of the people of Ukraine during that period, the action of the book spans six decades, from 1918 to the 1980s. The story moves back and forth in time and personally I would have found it helpful if all not just some of the chapter headings had shown a date. The inclusion of a family tree was incredibly useful for helping me keep track of characters and their relationships. The book does include some words in Ukrainian and Russian so be prepared to refer to your favourite search engine if they’re unfamiliar to you.

Most stories need a villain and in this case it’s a female character whose destructive actions result in Katya being parted from the man she loves and, later, from her son Alexander, in the process changing the course of Katya’s life.

The standout sections of the book for me were those describing Katya’s terrible experiences in Vorkuta, a Soviet labour camp where she is put to work in a gold mine alongside others who have fallen foul of Stalin’s regime. As well as gruelling work often with no tools but her hands, the extreme cold of Siberian winters and a near starvation diet, the possibility of death for a minor misdemeanour or on the whim of a guard is everpresent. The resilience needed to survive this is unimaginable.

The Soldier’s Child is a story of the cruelty of war, of displacement and forced separation from loved ones. And the sad thing is that Ukrainians are once again suffering at the hands of an invader who has no regard for human life. However, it’s also a story of courage, hope and resilience. And we see that again today in Ukraine.

In three words: Emotional, dramatic, moving

Try something similar: The Lace Weaver by Lauren Chater

About the Author

Tetyana Denford grew up in a small town in New York, and is a Ukrainian-American author, translator, and freelance writer. She grew up with her Ukrainian heritage at the forefront of her childhood, and it led to her being fascinated with how storytellers in various cultures passed down their lives to future generations; life stories are where we learn about ourselves, each other, and are the things that matter most, in a world where things move so quickly.

Connect with Tetyana
Website | Twitter | Instagram

#BlogTour #BookReview The Blood of Others by Graham Hurley @AriesFiction @HoZ_Books #TheBloodOfOthers #TuesdayBookBlog

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Welcome to the opening day of the blog tour for The Blood of Others by Graham Hurley which will be published on 6th July 2023. My thanks to Tara and Sophie at Ransom PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Head of Zeus for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the reviews by my tour buddies for today, Jen at Jen Med’s Book Reviews and Mairéad at Swirl and Thread.

About the Book

Dieppe, August 1942. A catastrophe no headline dared admit.

Plans are underway for the boldest raid yet on Nazi-occupied France. Over six thousand men will storm ashore to take the port of Dieppe. Lives will change in an instant – both on the beaches and in distant capitals.

Annie Wrenne, working at Lord Mountbatten’s cloak-and-dagger Combined Operations headquarters, is privy to the top secret plans for the daring cross-Channel raid.

Young Canadian journalist George Hogan, protegé of influential Lord Beaverbrook, faces a crucial assignment that will test him to breaking point.

And Abwehr intelligence officer Wilhelm Schultz is baiting a trap to lure thousands of Allied troops to their deaths.

Three lives linked by Operation Jubilee: the Dieppe Raid, 19 August 1942. Over six thousand men will storm the heavily defended French beaches. Less than half of them will make it back alive.

Format: eARC (400 pages)            Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 6th July 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Blood of Others on Goodreads

Purchase links 
Bookshop.org 
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK 
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The Blood of Others is the latest book in the author’s ‘Spoils of War’ series. It’s a non-chronological series, meaning books can be read in any order or as standalones, although some characters appear in more than one book. I’ve read quite a few of the books in the series – Finisterre, Last Flight to Stalingrad, Kyiv and Katastrophe (links from the titles will take you to my reviews) – and they all involve a skilfully-crafted blend of fact and fiction, focussing on key events during World War 2. Like previous books in the series, events unfold from the point of view of two main characters.

Wilhelm Schultz, an officer in the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, is a man you don’t want to cross. He has been, and still is, prone to acts of violence, although it has gained him some deadly enemies, allowing the author to incorporate a thriller element into the story and some dramatic scenes. Schultz is ruthless in his determination to ensure a Nazi victory and to make sure that any raid across the Channel by the Allies will end in failure. So whispers of a raid on what he knows to be the well-fortified port of Dieppe is a gift. And such is the desire of some, like Lord Mountbatten, to strike a target in occupied France that they don’t even need Schultz’s misinformation campaign that Dieppe is poorly defended to spur them on. (By the way, If you’ve read Katastrophe, you’ll know how Schultz’s fortunes change towards the end of the war. Divine justice, you might say.)

Much my favourite character was George Hogan. We follow his career from aspiring young journalist to protegé of Lord Beaverbrook. Beaverbrook, publisher of the influential Daily Express newspaper, friend of Winston Churchill and Lord Mountbatten, was a mover and shaker behind the ‘Second Front Now’ campaign, aimed at drawing German resources away from the Eastern Front. George marvels at the presentation of military setbacks as successes in order to maintain (or should that be to manipulate?) public morale. He reflects that, ‘Two years back, the Germans had chased most of the British Army out of northern France, but by some strange magic the evacuation that followed had become a kind of victory’ yet the newspaper headlines were ‘Miracle at Dunkirk‘ or ‘We Live To Fight Another Day‘. The more George learns about plans for the raid from experienced soldiers and from witnessing the build-up for himself, the more his sense of foreboding increases, and ours with it. For him it’s especially poignant because the troops that will be involved are largely fellow Canadians.

I would have liked more of a role for the female characters other than providing male characters with sexual gratification. In particular, I would have welcomed more from Annie’s point of view given her part in the story.

The book includes some neat walk-on parts by real-life figures, such as Noel Coward whom George meets as Coward’s in the midst of filming – and directing – one of my favourite WW2 films, albeit a film which was so obviously intended to be a wartime morale booster. [Other examples are Went the Day Well? (1942) and Henry V (1944).]

As is only too clear from the blurb, Operation Jubilee was a disaster, and was always going to be. The author concentrates on the how and the why for much of the book, leaving the description of the actual raid to the final chapters. The latter makes for tough reading given the loss of life and the manner in which men died. To put it bluntly, it was a bloodbath.

The Blood of Others is a thrilling read. It’s also an unflinching picture of the chaos, confusion and horror of war, as well as the clearest possible evidence that Operation Jubilee was an act of supreme hubris for which others paid the price.

In three words: Authentic, compelling, powerful

Try something similar: Munich by Robert Harris

About the Author

Graham Hurley is an award-winning TV documentary maker and the author of the acclaimed Faraday and Winter crime novels, two of which have been shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel. His Second World War thriller Finisterre, part of the critically acclaimed Spoils of War collection, was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.

Connect with Graham
Website | Twitter