Michelle Dsouza
I went in with high expectations and came out having wasted seventeen hours.
The history this book draws from is real and extraordinary. The women who ran escape lines through Nazi-occupied France, who moved Allied airmen across the Pyrenees at enormous personal risk, who were arrested and sent to camps and sometimes did not return, were women of documented, specific, extraordinary courage. A novel choosing to tell their story owed them the gravity they earned. This one assembled the clichés instead. There are so many genuinely great books written about this period that the laziness here is its own offense. Hannah did not try. She took every available shortcut and called it historical fiction.
The central absurdity of the premise: your city is invaded by Nazis and your first instinct is to cry about some man that you loved you didn't love you back and abandoned you? That is the book. That is the whole book. The occupation of France is not the subject. It is the mood board.
The writing is mediocre and the inconsistencies are not subtle. Isabelle distributes Resistance leaflets and steals a bicycle in knee-deep snow. Knee-deep snow leaves tracks. Tracks lead soldiers directly back to the people she is supposedly protecting. This is not a small oversight. It is the kind of basic logical gap that a careful writer, or a careful editor, closes before publication. This book has several of them and each one confirms that the research never went deeper than the surface.
The village of Carriveau is small and rural and somehow contains Nazis, SS officers, Gestapo, and a and entire networked train system that appears wherever the plot requires one. This is not world-building. This is a writer placing whatever she needs in whatever location the scene demands and hoping the reader does not notice.
Days after Vianne is assaulted, her husband conveniently returns home and she is now pregnant. The timing is so narratively convenient it borders on contemptuous toward the reader. If you want to write a love story, write a love story. Do not drag the trauma of war into it as a plot device and call it brave storytelling.
The prose itself does not compensate for any of this. It is functional at best, reaching for emotional weight through repetition and sentiment rather than through specificity or genuine observation. The dialogue is flat. There are no sentences here that stay with you. There is no moment of writing that earns its place through genuine skill.
The suggestion that what a woman needed to survive Nazi occupation was a beautiful face and a body men wanted is not historical looseness. It is offensive.
It is beyond comprehension that anyone has the nerve to romanticize war. The people who lived through Nazi occupation deserve to have their reality told with honesty, not dressed up in a love story because honest history is apparently less sellable.
The real women who inspired Isabelle earned legacies of genuine historical weight. This novel closes by reducing them to women in love. It is not a tribute. It is a reduction, and it is the most telling thing about what this book actually values.That this passed through an editorial process and was celebrated is its own conversation.
One star. Absolutely not.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.
I went in with high expectations and came out having wasted seventeen hours.
The history this book draws from is real and extraordinary. The women who ran escape lines through Nazi-occupied France, who moved Allied airmen across the Pyrenees at enormous personal risk, who were arrested and sent to camps and sometimes did not return, were women of documented, specific, extraordinary courage. A novel choosing to tell their story owed them the gravity they earned. This one assembled the clichés instead. There are so many genuinely great books written about this period that the laziness here is its own offense. Hannah did not try. She took every available shortcut and called it historical fiction.
The central absurdity of the premise: your city is invaded by Nazis and your first instinct is to cry about some man that you loved you didn't love you back and abandoned you? That is the book. That is the whole book. The occupation of France is not the subject. It is the mood board.
The writing is mediocre and the inconsistencies are not subtle. Isabelle distributes Resistance leaflets and steals a bicycle in knee-deep snow. Knee-deep snow leaves tracks. Tracks lead soldiers directly back to the people she is supposedly protecting. This is not a small oversight. It is the kind of basic logical gap that a careful writer, or a careful editor, closes before publication. This book has several of them and each one confirms that the research never went deeper than the surface.
The village of Carriveau is small and rural and somehow contains Nazis, SS officers, Gestapo, and a and entire networked train system that appears wherever the plot requires one. This is not world-building. This is a writer placing whatever she needs in whatever location the scene demands and hoping the reader does not notice.
Days after Vianne is assaulted, her husband conveniently returns home and she is now pregnant. The timing is so narratively convenient it borders on contemptuous toward the reader. If you want to write a love story, write a love story. Do not drag the trauma of war into it as a plot device and call it brave storytelling.
The prose itself does not compensate for any of this. It is functional at best, reaching for emotional weight through repetition and sentiment rather than through specificity or genuine observation. The dialogue is flat. There are no sentences here that stay with you. There is no moment of writing that earns its place through genuine skill.
The suggestion that what a woman needed to survive Nazi occupation was a beautiful face and a body men wanted is not historical looseness. It is offensive.
It is beyond comprehension that anyone has the nerve to romanticize war. The people who lived through Nazi occupation deserve to have their reality told with honesty, not dressed up in a love story because honest history is apparently less sellable.
The real women who inspired Isabelle earned legacies of genuine historical weight. This novel closes by reducing them to women in love. It is not a tribute. It is a reduction, and it is the most telling thing about what this book actually values.That this passed through an editorial process and was celebrated is its own conversation.
One star. Absolutely not.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.
Updated a reading goal:
Read 48 books by December 30, 2026
Progress so far: 45 / 48 93%
Hungry Eyes
I almost gave up on this in the first twenty pages. Not because it was bad, but because I had never read a memoir before and kept waiting for a plot that was never coming.
Then I looked up Dawn O'Porter and fell completely in love with her. After that, the book sailed.
Hungry Eyes follows the moments and meals that built Dawn into the person she is. Her beginnings are genuinely sad. She lost both parents young and was raised by her Aunty Jane in Guernsey, and you feel how much that shaped her on every single page. But this is not a sad book. It is the story of someone who came into herself with real honesty and humor and a lot of food, and watching that happen was, genuinely, an honor to read.
The writing is raw. Not raw in a performed, look-how-honest-I-am way. Actually raw. The kind where you laugh and then feel slightly guilty for laughing, and then Dawn makes the same joke a beat later and you realize you were supposed to laugh. I found myself giggling with her constantly, and I know I could listen to her tell her stories all day long.
The book is detailed enough that you feel like you lived inside the stories rather than just reading about them. Her writing is authentic enough that by the end you feel like you know who she is personally and who she loves deeply.
Aunty Jane is in a category of her own. The way Dawn writes about her is so pure it makes you want to call your own person, whoever that is for you.
There are recipes in this book. I made the Ultimate Mac N Cheese and the Panettone Bread Pudding within the same week. I am working out extra hard as a direct consequence and I have no one to blame but Dawn O'Porter and myself, in equal measure.
By the end I just wanted more. More stories, more meals, more Aunty Jane.
This was my first ever memoir and my first NetGalley ARC, and I did not expect to feel this way about either. Four stars and a growing suspicion I have been missing out on an entire genre.
I almost gave up on this in the first twenty pages. Not because it was bad, but because I had never read a memoir before and kept waiting for a plot that was never coming.
Then I looked up Dawn O'Porter and fell completely in love with her. After that, the book sailed.
Hungry Eyes follows the moments and meals that built Dawn into the person she is. Her beginnings are genuinely sad. She lost both parents young and was raised by her Aunty Jane in Guernsey, and you feel how much that shaped her on every single page. But this is not a sad book. It is the story of someone who came into herself with real honesty and humor and a lot of food, and watching that happen was, genuinely, an honor to read.
The writing is raw. Not raw in a performed, look-how-honest-I-am way. Actually raw. The kind where you laugh and then feel slightly guilty for laughing, and then Dawn makes the same joke a beat later and you realize you were supposed to laugh. I found myself giggling with her constantly, and I know I could listen to her tell her stories all day long.
The book is detailed enough that you feel like you lived inside the stories rather than just reading about them. Her writing is authentic enough that by the end you feel like you know who she is personally and who she loves deeply.
Aunty Jane is in a category of her own. The way Dawn writes about her is so pure it makes you want to call your own person, whoever that is for you.
There are recipes in this book. I made the Ultimate Mac N Cheese and the Panettone Bread Pudding within the same week. I am working out extra hard as a direct consequence and I have no one to blame but Dawn O'Porter and myself, in equal measure.
By the end I just wanted more. More stories, more meals, more Aunty Jane.
This was my first ever memoir and my first NetGalley ARC, and I did not expect to feel this way about either. Four stars and a growing suspicion I have been missing out on an entire genre.