Honestly, I think this book was a bit of a disappointment for me, especially compared to Cloud Cuckoo Land. Cloud Cuckoo Land was what I consider to be a textbook example of how to do multiple POV’s and timelines well, and this book fell far short for me. Each chapter being a different character felt very disjointed to me, especially when towards the end of the book, certain characters would get two chapters in a row for no apparent reason. The alternating timeline did make for lots of anticipation and helped the pacing quite a bit, but I did guess most of what you could call the “plot twists”.  The writing was choppy, almost felt like it was trying too hard to be lyrical, and would go off on tangents during important moments of the plot, which  actually led me to skip whole paragraphs occasionally. Seemed a little strange that he purposely built up an exciting, thrilling situation only to try and slow you down with long descriptions. 

My other issue with the book was the ending, but not necessarily for the reasons many people don’t like it. I appreciated that it was realistic and everything didn’t end with rainbows and butterflies. The war was accurately depicted - war eats people alive and affects them for the rest of their lives. What bothered me was how rushed the ending was - you spent 400+ pages getting to know these characters quite deeply over a span of 4 years. and then in a matter of 20 pages, you’re watching the rest of their entire lives play out.  I would rather the book have been longer and gotten to follow them more closely through the years after the war, or not at all. Especially because of the unnecessary the r@pe scene. And even after all of the explanation of what happened to each character, the book is still left open-ended with one of the biggest questions left unanswered. 

All of the stars I have for this book really come from the characters. They had a lot of depth and many layers, the third person perspective gave the perfect amount of introspection without over-doing it, and they were imperfect but lovable. I think one of my favorite relationships was between Marie and Etienne. 

Overall, this book doesn’t rank nearly as high as I thought it would on my list of favorite WW2 books because of the disjointed POV and rushed ending, but it was an exciting, well-researched book with well- developed, intentional characters.