Publisher: 22nd April 2021 by HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter
Pages: 400 pages
How I Read It: ARC book
Genre: historical fiction, romance, contemporary
My Rating: 3.5 cups
Synopsis:
Two lost souls brought together by the chaos of war.
A train journey into the past.
A love that echoes through time.
Paddington Station, present day
A young woman boards the sleeper train to Cornwall with only a beautiful emerald silk evening dress and an old, well-read diary full of sketches. Ellie Nightingale is a shy violinist who plays like her heart is broken. But when she meets fellow passenger Joe she feels like she has been given that rarest of gifts…a second chance.
Paddington Station, 1944
Beneath the shadow of the war which rages across Europe, Alex and Eliza meet by chance. She is a gutsy painter desperate to get to the frontline as a war artist and he is a wounded RAF pilot now commissioned as a war correspondent. With time slipping away they make only one promise: to meet in Berlin when this is all over. But this is a time when promises are hard to keep, and hope is all you can hold in your heart.
From a hidden Cornish cove to the blood-soaked beaches of Normandy in June 1944, this is an epic love story like no other.
My Thoughts
‘Ellie knew that life was not about the destination but the journey, and yet, tonight, the destination was all she could think of, and it was suddenly closing in on her far too fast.’
I was excited to read Melanie’s new book as I have so enjoyed her others. For this particular book, chapters alternate between Eliza in 1944 and Ellie in the present day. It investigates the parallels and synchronicity of the same train journey these two women take but separated by decades.
‘The roles we choose for ourselves, which are interchangeable, don’t always suit our true character, which is not interchangeable...’
The two chance encounters on these train journeys are quite varied. Eliza and Alex in war torn Britain (and the story ventures off to Europe as well) is full of special moments against a tragic background. Comparatively, Ellie and Joe’s story does not carry the same spark yet Melanie does her best to create a meaningful connection. This modern encounter may have lacked enough detail and depth (difficult with two storylines) to fully engage the reader.
‘I think it’s about choosing to live life with an open heart and an attitude of hope rather than one of dread and fear. It’s about just knowing, I suppose, that all will be well…’
Eliza and Alex’s story was the classic wartime love affair and the better of the two tales. So much so, that I often regretted being dragged away to the present day as sweet as Ellie’s story may have been. It appeared to be there as the thread to draw parallels with the wartime story. There are also some well researched details from the war pertaining to time spent on a nursing auxiliary hospital ship or the sketches Eliza drew from D-Day and onwards.
‘It seems that there is no end to the unfathomable waste of human life our generation must witness.’
This brings me to the inclusion of the role of war artists and their desire in detailing, or wanting to detail, the awful reality that they saw and felt compelled to communicate to those back home. It raises the issue of whether or not seeing the imagery of such atrocities should be both documented and shared as it made it so much more real through confronting imagery. An interesting point to ponder. So whilst not my favourite book of Melanie’s, there are definite elements - the train travel, the frontline stories, the serendipity of encounters - that make it worth your while to read.
‘Perhaps your being on the train was …’ ‘Fate?’ he asked. ‘I was going to say destiny, but yes, fate.’ ‘Next stop Berlin, then?’ he said, releasing her hand. ‘Absolutely. Next stop Berlin.’
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.
Great review, thanks for sharing your thoughts
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