There's so many books about WW1 that it's really hard to make something stand out. There's a really interesting idea at the heart of this, the pioneering work of plastic surgery to help soldiers with facial injuries, but unfortunately there seemed to be just too much else going on around that. I liked the main characters that we're first introduced to, but as the war starts and more are introduced, again, it felt like there was too much going on, and the way all the threads are brought together felt a little too convenient. 

The juxtaposing of Julia's vain and misguided attempts to retain her youthful beauty with Riley's horrific life altering facial injuries didn't really work for me either, nor did the way Julia's struggles were portrayed as her fighting her own war. Again I feel like there was the root of something really interesting there but the story didn't explore it in enough depth to make it interesting, or to really say anything.