Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I wanted to like this book so badly, I really did. It had everything I was interested in- it was a murder mystery, a historical novel, a female protagonist who actually does something, et cetera. But it just didn't deliver. To start, this is not a well-written book. I've read books with lackluster writing in the past, but this takes the cake. The sentences plod, the scenery drags, and it's filled with characters who are more talking heads than real people. Constant conversations about how "there's a war on, you know!" just kill it for me. It's as if the author is so invested in her setting that she neglects things like characterization and showing detail. She's obviously done a lot of research, and tells us - but I never feel like I'm really there. I feel like someone is just telling me that she did a lot of research, and as a result, I can't get lost in the book. Second, the plot is incredibly clumsy. There's too much in it - again, showing us how much research she's done - and the foreshadowing is weak at best. Apparently, Maggie's father is a big deal, unbeknownst to her, and characters hint at it in quaint exchanges like this: "But then there's Maggie's father..." "She doesn't know about him!" "Yet!" And cue the dramatic music. There's no delicate suspense. Everything is thrown at the reader - there's never a chance to guess which characters are good and which ones aren't, or a chance to really look at a character's flaws, because everything in this novel is black or white. But a hero who has flaws and a villain who can be genuinely good makes for a much more interesting read; but for all of Maggie's "flaws," we're supposed to wink at each other and say that Maggie's still the white knight of the story. And lastly, this book just fails on the historical level. It's not enough to do a bunch of research and call it a day; if it were, MacNeal would have done her job right, and I wouldn't be here. It's more a matter of respecting, and understanding, the time period, something that MacNeal just doesn't do. I love a strong female character, but there's a point where we're getting characters who are more 2012 than 1940. I feel like that's why people love this book - it's more a projection of fantasies, like if a modern day mathematician got thrown into the war. And for another example, homosexuality in Britain was illegal until 1967; talk of decriminalising homosexuality didn't even garner serious attention until 1957. For there to be an openly gay character is unrealistic: it's just not plausible that someone would be that open about their sexuality when it was illegal, and it's even less plausible that everyone in Maggie's circle is so accepting, even if they are good people. To write good historical fiction you have to understand that with different times come different sensibilities - that it's not just 2012 mapped onto 1940.