It’s an absolute pleasure today to be joining the blog tour and sharing my review of The Officer’s Wife by Catherine Law: published by Boldwood Books on 3rd April, it’s now available as an e-book (free via Kindle Unlimited), in paperback, and as an audiobook. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for the invitation and support, and to the publishers for my advance e-copy (provided via netgalley).
You’ll know that I do have my favourites (and I know I really shouldn’t…), but I also really enjoy discovering authors I haven’t read before – this isn’t a debut, but it is Catherine’s first book with Boldwood. And as soon as Rachel’s email dropped into my inbox, this was a book I knew I really wanted to read…
1939 American heiress Vivi Miles falls for naval officer Nathan as soon as she arrives in England. And, under the threat of war, they marry in a whirlwind before he leaves to join his ship.
When Nathan returns from Dunkirk injured, he is distant, aloof, and no longer the man Vivi fell in love with. But it’s not just because of his brutal experiences of war. Nathan has a secret and Vivi suspects it’s linked to the mysterious evacuee at the secluded house in the woods on his Kent estate.
As war continues to rage, Vivi battles her own grief and loneliness, and tries to find out the truth of the girl’s identity, uncovering a scandal from the past.
Is her love for Nathan strong enough to survive?
It’s ten years now since I began reviewing books on my blog – and, if I go back to the very beginning, I see names like Kate Morton and Katherine Webb, and remember how much I loved their brand of historical fiction before I sidetracked into crime and psych thrillers, and finally found my comfortable place amidst the lighter end of romantic fiction. And this book really made me remember those books that used to be my first choice of reading – it’s an emotionally compelling family drama, with just the right degree of historical detail for a story that begins at the start of WW2 and spans the years through to the 1960s, entirely consumed me for as long as I read, and stayed with me for some time thereafter.
There’s an intriguing prologue where a young boy, on holiday in Margate with his parents, meets a young girl collecting seaweed for her mother’s cures – don’t overlook it, even if it seems disconnected from the story that follows, where we meet Vivi, an American heiress, visiting England with her parents, her father visiting a business associate, and her unexpectedly finding love with their son Nathan. They marry after only one previous meeting, followed by an exchange of letters – and she finds herself living with his parents as he takes up his duties as a naval officer. He returns a changed man – but the character who always draws the eye is Vivi, finding an extraordinary strength to see her through every new challenge, facing up to all the losses, challenges and betrayals that blight her life. I won’t stray outside the book’s description, but this really is quite a story – secrets that surface and shake the family’s foundations, and a story of survival and tenacity quite wonderfully told.
The characterisation is just superb – Vivi, a wonderful mix of strength and vulnerability, is always at the story’s core, but there’s a very strong supporting cast – and I loved the way the story was told, its pacing entirely perfect and every new revelation emotionally quite perfectly judged and moving the story forward. And I loved the settings – wonderful descriptions, the family home and estate and the mysterious cottage in the woods that becomes central to the story. The focus of the book changes in the post-war years – beautifully handled, edge-of-the-seat as yet more secrets surface, and the whole story races towards an uncertain but wholly satisfying conclusion.
I have to say I really loved this one – the author’s writing is stunning, and the story everything I wanted it to be. I can’t wait to see what she does next – I’m so delighted that this book didn’t escape my radar, and I’d recommend it really highly.
About the author
Catherine Law lives in Kent, 10 minutes from the sea, having grown up in Harrow. And ever since she was a child, she has loved to create stories. She writes romantic novels set in the first half of the 20th century, in and around the First and Second World Wars. Her books are inspired by the tales our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers tell us, and the secrets they keep.
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