Tag: WW2

#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

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Hive | Amazon UK 
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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
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#BookReview #Ad The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor @HarperCollins

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About the Book

1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring — she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher — to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas.

1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away.

When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other — one on land, the other at sea — will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.

Format: eARC (368 pages)            Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 8th June 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Last Lifeboat on Goodreads

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My Review

The Last Lifeboat is inspired by the true story of the sinking of the SS City of Benares, a ship carrying child evacuees from England to supposed safety in Canada in September 1940.

Opening with a dramatic scene in the aftermath of the torpedoing of the ship (named the SS Carlisle for the purposes of the novel) by a German U-boat, the book follows a small group of people, including a number of children, who find themselves adrift in a lifeboat. Amongst the group is Alice King, a young teacher acting as one of the escorts to the evacuees, and the lone woman in the lifeboat. Over the next few days, we follow them as they encounter storms, endure hunger and thirst, and are gradually weakened by exposure to the elements. The scenes are so vividly imagined that you really do feel you are experiencing it all alongside them. As their hopes of rescue begin to fade, their experience becomes one of grim endurance and a daily struggle to survive that takes a mental and physical toll.

For Alice, delivering the children entrusted to her care to safety becomes a personal mission, something to cling to during the dark times, and one for which she is prepared to sacrifice herself if necessary. ‘Buoyed by the bright morning, she gathers up the tattered fragments of hope the storm had torn from her in the night, and stitches them together into a patchwork of determination and belief; a blanket of courage big enough to cover them all.’

Alternating with the dramatic and absolutely gripping scenes aboard the lifeboat, we witness the anguish of the recently widowed Lily who made the difficult – and lonely – decision to place her son and daughter aboard the ship thinking this was the way to keep them safe from the increasingly heavy bombing raids on London. It turns out to be anything but. When news of the disaster is made public, she remains determined not to give up hope that her children may have survived or to stop pressing the authorities to continue the search for that last lifeboat.

Like the author’s earlier book, The Bird in the Bamboo Cage, The Last Lifeboat shines a spotlight on the courageous exploits of women in wartime. But it doesn’t ignore the ‘ordinary’ women, those women described as ‘the quiet essential backbone of the war on the home front’. There are some interesting male characters in the book and I liked the fact that they display a heroism that is rooted in moral principles.

There are emotional scenes towards the end of the book and if you can read them without reaching for the tissues then you must have a heart of stone. Personally, I would have been happy for the book to end at the final chapter with its moving last paragraph. However, the epilogue’s message that relationships formed in times of disaster may have enduring bonds is an uplifting one.

The Last Lifeboat is an utterly immersive story that is at times heartbreaking. It also demonstrates, as if we needed reminding, of the horror of war and its indiscriminate nature. At one point a character asks, ‘What on earth are we doing to each other?’ But what also shines through is the resilience of the human spirit.

In three words: Emotional, dramatic, moving

Try something similar: The Bird in the Bamboo Cage by Hazel Gaynor

About the Author

Hazel Gaynor is an award-winning New York Times, USA Today and Irish Times bestselling author of historical fiction, including her debut The Girl Who Came Home for which she received the 2015 RNA Historical Novel of the Year award. The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter was shortlisted for the 2019 HWA Gold Crown award. She is published in thirteen languages and nineteen countries. Originally from Yorkshire, Hazel lives in Ireland with her family.

Connect with Hazel
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