France 1944 and the streets are filled with swastikas. The story of a brave English girl behind enemy lines, a German soldier, and a terrible sacrifice…
When young English nurse Sibyl Lake is recruited as a spy to support the French resistance, she doesn’t realise the ultimate price she will end up paying. She arrives in Colmar, a French town surrounded by vineyards and swarming with German soldiers, but her fear is dampened by the joy of being reunited with her childhood sweetheart Jacques.
Sibyl’s arrival has not gone unnoticed by Commander Wolfgang von Haagan and she realises that letting him get closer is her best chance of learning enemy secrets. Yet despite her best intentions, Sibyl soon finds that betrayal does not come easy to her.
When Jacques finds that Sibyl is involved with the enemy, he is determined to prove himself to her with one last act of heroism. An act that will put all of their lives in terrible danger…
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Soldier's Girl to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Soldier's Girl by Sharon Maas sees the author stepping away from her books set in India and Guiana and venturing down into new territory by basing a book around World War Two. Specifically the Alsace region, an area I knew very little about prior to reading this story. In the end notes Sharon has said her publishers suggested she try a book set during the war years and I am ever so glad they did because The Soldier's Girl was an interesting, riveting read that showed the author can turn her hand to any time period. In fact I would love for her in the future to write even more books set during this time so caught up was I in the story of Sibyl as she works undercover for the British Special Operations Unit in France.
The story begins with a brief but tense and intriguing prologue as Sibyl sheds her old skin and is launched into enemy occupied territory in France. 'She slid out of the crust called me, that Sibyl - me, out of that persona with a name and a past, parted from it as if it were an old skin useless defunct, a cast of peel'. So begins a journey fraught with danger, anxiety and bravery for Sibyl is determined her beloved Alsace and it's people will be liberated and returned to French hands and she wants to play her part in achieving this. To understand the motivation that drives Sibyl endlessly on through the most nerve racking, disturbing and stressful of times, we are taken back to her childhood.
In 1929 following the unexpected death of her father, her mother Kathleen takes her two young daughters Sibyl and Elena to France to recover and come to terms with their loss. To allow themselves time to heal and plan the next step. They stay at Chateau Gauthier near Colmar which belongs to Kathleen's old school friend Margaux. Five harvests were spent in Alsace, it became a time where Sibyl felt alive again, she fell in love with the country and the people and perhaps she would have loved her deepening friendship with Jacques son of the winemaker Max to develop into something more if she had been permitted to stay. 'It's being apart that lends true depth to love. For if you cannot be together in body you are forced to dig deep inside to be together in the soul'. But with the rumblings of a new chancellor in Germany and fear that if something did happen that Alsace would once again fall into German hands, Kathleen remarries and brings her children back to London. Sibyl is devastated but life must go on.
We jump forward again to the mid 1940's where the war has been ongoing for several years and Sibyl is now working as a nurse in a London hospital. She is dedicated to her job and despite witnessing such suffering she knows she wants to do more. She applies to Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service but a Mr. Smith intervenes and here is where her life is changed for ever. Now is the time for Sibyl to step up to the mark and fight for Alsace, for the area that has always resolutely held such a strong place in her heart. She is passionate that she wants to help liberate France and the powers that be place their ultimate trust in her when she is secretly employed to work in special intelligence aiding the small group of resistance fighters who are at work in Alsace. Sibyl chosen thanks to her abilities to speak German, French and Alsatian. Alsace had been completely annexed by Germany. To all intents and purposes its French routes had disappeared even the residents were now German with name changes. I had never read anything about this previously and it truly was fascinating to discover another strand to the war. How did people cope having their identity taken away from them and living under constant fear of retribution from German soldiers for misdemeanours which may have been normal one day and the next unbeknownst to them forbidden?
Sharon Maas clearly undertook extensive research into the German control of Alsace during the war years and it was like I was attending a brilliant history class with an unusual love story thrown in and I was enthralled by it all. My only two minor complaints regrading the story as a whole was that the training of Sibyl was rushed through and I would have loved to have read more detail of this. The further I read I understand why this did happen as the author wanted to get Sibyl to France and move the story further forward but even one or two more chapters surrounding the training would have been good. My second issue would be for the first quarter of the book there were times where I felt things had already been said as if I was literally reading the same words twice over as if they had just been re-jigged around in a sentence. I had to stop and check had I gone back instead of forward on my Kindle. I felt this section of the book needed a little more editing as there was a significant amount of repetition and a point could have been made in a sentence or two instead of an entire paragraph or more therefore leading to some clunky writing that didn't flow as naturally as it should have. But this didn't detract from my enjoyment of the Sibyl's story and I was eager to see was the balancing act she found herself in worth it or would she trip up and fall too many times and her fate would be sealed?
Sibyl was a self sacrificing kind of girl, she always had the freedom of France at the forefront of her mind and was determined that she would aid in the sabotage and subterfuge of the German's plans. Parachuting into France one of the first people she meets is Jacques, now a grown man and a deserter of the German army. Now older and wiser they confess their deep connection and love but can this last given the circumstances and events unfolding and what's more it is tested even further when Sybil has to make the ultimate sacrifice for her country? There's was a 'unity so deep, a beauty so pure, their souls so utterly fused that the word love was never once mentioned, it was superfluous'. They band together with the resistance group and what follows is a story of living in terror and fear of plans being discovered. Sibyl is hard-working, compassionate and supposedly unshakeable under pressure. I say this because at times I really felt she would give the game away. The minute she arrives in Colmar under her new guise as Jeanne to work with her Uncle Yves in his cobbler shop she makes such a rookie error. There was more than one occasion where she made silly errors and surely a trained spy wouldn't do this? But one has to remember she literally had very quick training and then was launched into a job where she was in command with no other help where usually there was backup. In my mind this demonstrated the pressure people were under to live a life of lies and deception. Words and actions had to be watched at all times as the German soldiers and in turn the Gestapo were not to be under estimated.
The Soldier's Girl of the title comes into play when on arrival to her destination where she will work undercover she meets the Commandant of the Colmar region - Major Wolfgang von Haagen. Wolfgang was a fantastically written character and I could picture him so clearly in my mind always arriving unannounced to the cobbler's shop to woo Sibyl. The author portrayed a different side to a German soldier. one who was disillusioned by 1944 with the way the outcome of the war was going but yet at the same time he remained loyal to the Reich to the bitter end. He was a character who swayed back and forth strong and resolute but then at the drop of a hat he could fall to pieces. I desperately wanted Sibyl to keep away from him but she was in too deep and maybe this would be an advantage to the British powers that be.
At times scenes between Wolfgang and Sibyl were uncomfortable to read simply because I was on the edge of my seat in fear that he would discover the true Sibyl who was Jeanette who later became Marlene. Life was a façade but a very very dangerous one and I was waiting for one slip of the tongue or someone witnessing Sibyl plotting and planning. Sibyl had an inner strength and conviction that was to be admired and though it went against everything ingrained in her she perused something more regarding Wolfgang and given he was so domineering and wanted his plans to go his way she really did have no other choice. She was to be admired for placing herself in such a challenging position that could lead to the worst outcome. I'm still wondering though despite the ending – which was rather abrupt, I would have loved a little more fleshing out - did true love play a part in things or was it all forced?
As we hurtled towards the conclusion The Soldier's Girl took on so many twists and turns and the pace and tension increased page by page. Sibyl comes to realise 'she was just a cog in a greater wheel, a wheel in which feelings played no role whatsoever'. It's when she comes to this understanding that she knows she can play the roles, assume the identities because she is putting the future of the country before her own needs and desires. The Soldier's Girl is a book where by the end I wanted to go and do my own research into life in Alsace at the time of the German annexation.
Sharon Maas has shone a light to great effect on an aspect of the war that has not been written much about in historical fiction. Yes, a love story forms part of the book but it is so much more than that and it proved to a fascinating read. I was caught up in all the drama and kept guessing until the very end as to the outcome. I feared for Sibyl's safety throughout and wondered would she ever find happiness and if so who with? I would definitely recommend this book and I do hope Sharon Maas will provide us with more books of this nature, she has an eye for a good story set in this time period and the potential is enormous given how much of a good start she made with Sibyl's story.
Thank you so much for this lovely review, Shaz!
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