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Thank you to #NetGalley for this book.

This is the first book I've read by her and I will be reading her others too.

This was not an easy read since it's set in Pearl Harbor in 1941. Grace and April were sisters and Poppy was their friend who were all nurses heading to Hawaii even before the war. They met Eva who was a nurse on a ship and they all became friends. Tragedy happens to one of them but life goes on.

The atrocities of the war were everywhere and the make shift hospital was unbelievable with the soldiers with their war wounds. It was pretty graphic but I got through it.

Things happen along the way and April and Grace go to the front and it even gets worse.

However, there are happy moments and they all fall in love.

The ending was perfect. ( )

Starts Out Feeling Like The Movie, Becomes So Much More. Through the opening third of this book or so, when our central characters are at Pearl Harbor, it is very hard to break away from comparing the scenes here to the Ben Affleck / Kate Beckinsale movie from the turn of the Millenium. Which isn't an overly bad thing - this reader loved that movie and it made a fair amount at the box office to boot.

And then we get to Dec 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. (Though I do wish Lane had included that particular phrase when showing some of Roosevelt's speech the next day.)

At the actual attack, Lane does a superb job of getting us into the heads of these particular characters as the events and aftermath are unfolding. It is here that she truly sepatates her tale from the movie, and it is at this point that the reader never really thinks about the movie again until sitting down to write the review.

To go much in depth at all with the plot beyond this is to veer close to spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that for those that survive Dec 7, the book continues with the efforts to further support the war, this time in the Africa Campaign. Superb writing here again, though there *is* a rape scene that some may want to be aware of going into this. But Lane does an excellent job of expanding our scope in this section to see not just the soldiers and nurses, but the townspeople they are working among.

Overall maybe my one complaint here is that the ending is perhaps a bit too tidy, particularly after doing such an amazing job of showing the various horrors of war from the small and personal to the grand and international. Still, very much a recommended book. ( )

I love a good WWII genre book and this was one. Great characters, lots of action and historical accuracy. I was not that aware of the war from the eyes of the nurses and it was very informative and especially when they move to North Africa. I recommend this one for all fans of historical fiction and definitely fans of WWII fiction. ( )

It’s the story of three nurses who faced the attack on Pearl Harbor and their deployment to Northern Africa afterwards. It focused on the individual lives of the women who just couldn’t believe their good fortune to be stationed in beautiful Hawaii and on a naval base at that…lots of good looking available sailors. Their joy soon turned to horror when the Japanese launched a surprise attack that made it impossible for the U.S. not to enter the war. I thought that the characters are very interesting individuals with each one displaying vividly their individual personalities and quirks. I remember as a child my mother telling me about Pearl Harbor and the day that set in motion the event that would take three of her 6 brothers….December 7, 1941…her 18th birthday. She says she has no memories of that birthday at all other than her small town preparing to lose most of the young men that lived there. I liked that the author showed
that life did go on in the midst of unimaginable devastation. The suffering and amazing bravery of the fighting men and woman during that time, or in any time in any war, is truly an incredible testimony of the human heart and spirit. ( )