Publisher: Berkley Publishing,  June 13, 2023

Format: ebook

Pages: 384

Rating: 4/5 stars

Summary (Goodreads):

Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters, in a moving and triumphant new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.
 
1940, Kent : Alice King is not brave or daring—she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher—to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas.
 
1940, London : Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away.
 
When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other—one on land, the other at sea—will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.

My Review:

Read if you like: dual perspective, evacuation stories in WW2
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The book follows two perspectives as Britain works to safely evacuate children during the Second World War. Alice volunteers to escort a group of children across the Atlantic Ocean and Lily sends her two children with her. When a torpedo hits the boat, Alice must fight for her life and for the lives of the children around her, and Lily must fight to bring her children home.
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This book was tough to read. As a relatively new mom, the death of children is a sensitive topic for me, but I thought the author did an amazing job of telling this story. I bawled at the end and that is not only because of the tough subject matter, but the skill of the writer in connecting me to these characters.
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Thank you Berkley Publishing for the copy of this book.