Reviewed by Emma Crowley
When Ava arrives in Greece, it’s with a heart that’s shattered into a thousand pieces. But as she pulls up in a tiny village nestled on a cliff above the glittering Ionian Sea, and steps out in front of a tumbledown house that once belonged to her grandmother Sophia, everything changes.
At first Ava almost wants to laugh at this bizarre inheritance—a home that has been uninhabited since the Second World War—that appears as close to collapse as she herself feels. But with nowhere left to run to, her only choice is to start putting the house together again.
What Ava doesn’t expect is for pieces of her grandmother’s story to emerge, as a local survivor from the war begins to share her secrets. Ava can’t help but be drawn to Sophia’s hidden past… even though the truth could change her own life forever.
Because Sophia’s story is one of devastating choices she had to make during the Nazi invasion of her beloved country. It’s a story of bravery, betrayal and tragedy. But most of all, it is a story about love…
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of Beyond the Olive Grove to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Beyond the Olive Grove by Kate Hewitt is a dual timeline story which moves back and forth between the present day and World War Two. In the present day Ava Lancet is travelling to the small Greek village of Iousidous. This journey for her seems like an escape from England. She is fleeing from the pain, hurt and grief that surrounds her on a daily basis. Her marriage is on the rocks and she believes the separation from her husband Simon could likely turn into a permanent state. Having lost both her hope and her marriage, escape feels like her only option nothing remains for her in England.
Ava was at a total crossroads in her life but as she is deep in grief she doesn’t know which direction she should take. She feels weak and spineless and you can tell emotionally she has reached rock bottom. She really is all over the place emotionally and you just sense that she can’t make any firm decisions, that she is not in the right head space at all. Time away in Greece should give her the space to reset and try and come to terms with things but little does she realise that a whole new set of intriguing questions will arise. But perhaps digging that little bit deeper and uncovering past secrets may very well help her in on her own journey to healing and acceptance.
When she arrives at the village Ava finds it to be very small and it’s like it has remained stuck in the past. She has the key to a house that has remained unlived in for over 60 years. Once her grandmother, who has recently passed away, lived here but she never talked about her time in Greece. It was a closed off subject and it seems the residents there now refuse to talk abut what happened during the war. Ava meets Eleni and her mother Parthenope who is now very old but she recognises Ava or so she thinks and says she is sorry. But for what? Ava’s interest is immediately piqued and she wants to find out more about her grandmother and what happened to her and her family during the war. I didn’t feel this overwhelming sense from Ava that she was on a quest to find out more straight away, there didn’t seem to be any urgency about her. Instead things seemed to crop up all of a sudden, she learned of them and then moved onto the next piece of the puzzle. It was just too rushed and I wanted even more detailed explanations and careful considering observations and breaking down of what she was discovering.
Ava does meet Andreas Lethikos and his daughter Kalista. I understood their inclusion as a means of connecting their olive grove with Ava’s grandmother’s story but still they felt out of place or else perhaps they weren’t utilised as well as they could have been. As Ava delves deeper back into her family history you hope as a reader that she can reconcile the past with the present and in doing so find what she needs to fill the deep hole in her life. Unless she can really confront what has torn her apart, and speak openly with her husband, there really is no hope that she can try and find her way back to the person she once was.
I enjoyed the element of the story set back during the years of the war. It was a vastly different time to the one Ava inhabits now. We meet Sophia who lives with her father and sister Angelika and they run a smallholding. Sophia works in the local coffeehouse when needed and they manage to get by but times are tough in Greece. The country is fraught with danger as the Italians have taken control and fear abounds that the Germans might come marching in at any moment. Every character in the past is always on high alert, in fear of doing the wrong thing and in turn facing horrific reprisals. But Angelika seems to have her head in the clouds and is infatuated with Dimitrios who is working with the Greek resistance.
I admit to becoming slightly confused regarding the two factions of the Greek resistance. At times I couldn’t figure out who was the good or bad side of the two factions and as the story reached its height they very much became intertwined and it all happened so quickly and with Sophia more or less having no choice but to become involved things took a very dramatic turn. Sophia all along had wanted to keep her head down, to remain anonymous and just make it through the war safe and sound. But the Greek customs, traditions and societal rules for women are changing and I did admire that when tasked to do something, although she was filled with fear, she did do what was required of her. In doing so she put her life on the line and that of her family but she knew she was playing her part in trying to win the war. A romance element did come into play and I liked how it came together in the end although at the time of reading about it as it arose it just seemed to occur without any real and meaningful interaction. It was altogether too brief. Sophie was a well written character, brave, determined and courageous but as Ava discovers why did she want to keep her time during the war a secret for so many years?
Beyond the Olive Grove was a very quick read and at times I found myself wanting that little bit more from it. A little more depth or fleshing out of scenes would have made me appreciate the characters sacrifices even more than I already did. Events seemed to occur very quickly without much lead up to them and before we knew it they were over within a page or two and then we were on to the next thing. Everything just seemed to happen so quickly and there was just a bit too much glossing over things. At times the story fell back on itself repeating things instead of giving me more detailed explanation on the series of events that unfolded. Saying all that despite some of the issues I found with it, this was a good book with an interesting storyline at its centre and it shed a light on another aspect of the war I have never given much thought to.
I have read so many historical fiction books set in Germany, France or England so it was a refreshing change to have a book set in Greece. It made me want to research more about this country and how it faired during the war. Although this wasn’t my favourite book by Kate Hewitt I think Beyond the Olive Grove is worth a read for the insight it gives into Greece during World War Two and to also follow Ava’s story as a woman who is going through so much torment and anguish. You will be rooting for her to come out the other side, if possible much stronger.
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