Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Maddie Brady is overwhelmed with relief to see a brave soul ahead of her rescue a little boy trapped among the landmines on the beach. But thanking the man, Maddie is shocked to hear a German accent. Why would an escaped German prisoner of war rescue an English boy?
As a driver in the Army, Maddie is duty-bound to report Rudi immediately. But when he speaks of his home in a sheltered valley destroyed by Nazis, and how his father was killed for objecting to the war, Maddie feels a deep connection to this lost soul with sparkling blue eyes.
With Rudi hiding out in a farmer’s barn, Maddie can’t keep herself away, smuggling him bread and water. Their passion brings them comfort in the darkest days. But as their love grows, so does the terrible danger of discovery…
As her colleagues begin to suspect she’s hiding something, Maddie is torn between loyalty to her country, and the man she’s shared everything with. Helping Rudi flee across the desolate countryside would mean being parted forever – and if he’s captured, he may not even survive. But could she bear to betray her soulmate? As the war tears the world apart, will they survive the impossible – or will their secret love only bring them despair?
Many thanks via Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of Be Brave For Me to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Be Brave For Me is the first book in the A Cornish Wartime series by Elaine Johns who is a new author for me. The majority of the book is set during World War Two although the last quarter focuses on the years thereafter and the fall out for our main characters. Madeleine (Maddie) Brady went against her mothers wishes and joined the ATS -Auxiliary Territorial Service. Her mother feels it isn’t the done thing for women to be working outside the home, rather they should be supporting their men through voluntary work or perhaps knitting items needed at the front. But Maddie craves excitement and to do her bit for her country as she is very patriotic and is part of a group of women stepping outside their comfort zones and doing lots of different jobs whilst the men fight abroad. Maddie had been assigned to the war office and drives the top brass around to various destinations, the latest being a visit to Cornwall to bring Captain Ernest Andrews to Camp 115, a prisoner of war camp for captured Germans. It’s this trip that changes the fate of Maddie’s life forever, where she finds and subsequently and quite literally loses someone but the scars of this encounter she will feel for many years to come.
Cornwall, although only the setting for the beginning and end of the book, plays such an important role in the story as a whole and when Maddie is given a 48 hour pass and is allowed to take the car to tour the countryside she grabs it with open arms. But little does she know someone else is accompanying her on her days off and it’s only when a young boy is in danger of being blown up by a land mine on a beach that Maddie discovers a prisoner has escaped from the camp. That person being Rudi Fischer who was shot down and captured. Everyone knows what happened during World War Two and it’s almost expected that we should hate the Germans and Maddie feels that pressure too. But yet at the same time she feels a connection with Rudi, that he is different to all the others and doesn’t want to be fighting. She is her own woman and has never met a man who could treat her as an equal but there is an undeniable attraction between the pair and the feelings she is developing are dangerous and above all else traitorous.
Maddie is torn between handing him in as she feels immense guilt believing herself to be a traitor. Instantly, I thought she was being way too harsh on herself because what happened wasn’t her fault. How was she to know someone had stowed away in the car? Although the time the pair spend together is brief and initially, I thought god how could they fall for each other so quickly and declare their undying love and make the sacrifice they did? After a few chapters it did feel real and genuine but then my thoughts turned to where the book could go next and it’s only the fallout from their meeting which becomes apparent later on that for me this is the point where the book became really gripping and I was definitely turning the pages far quicker than I had been at the start.
Rudi doesn’t feature as much as I thought he would in the book but it makes sense the more you read as to why he doesn’t. This allows Maddie to develop into a fascinating character who is magnificent, courageous and bold. She goes through significant trauma which I won’t delve into any further but suffice to say this was really well written. I had read about this before and felt the topic was dealt with in a sensitive and appropriate manner. It was harsh, vivid, traumatic and heart-breaking but it shaped how Maddie was for the remainder of the novel as she continued her war work. I wish the character of Gertie had been introduced much earlier on. She was a fabulous character and I loved the friendship which developed between herself and Maddie. It went beyond just being friends. They became like sisters and helped each other though thick and thin and the most desperate of times. Gertie and Maddie shared similar characteristics and life experiences and showed that women could be strong, fearless and unbeatable in the most desperate of times. I loved how the story wound its way to its conclusion with plenty of twists and turns appearing as the reader wonders will Maddie stay strong and survive all the brutalities of war or will humanity, kindness and love shine through? Can some goodness come out of the bad?
I found Be Brave For Me took its time to get going and there was a lot of repetition or overuse of characters names. For example Maddie mentions several times in the beginning how Molly is her best friend that she rooms with and tells us her first and second name several times and gives us information about her that really wasn’t relevant at all. The exact same occurred when Maddie meets a woman in the village where she stops to have something to eat when she is on her 48 hour leave. These were such minor characters there wasn’t the need to go off on tangents about them and I found it irritating at the time. Pushing that aside when I finally settled into the book and I felt the pace picked up and what was being said was relevant to the story and pushing the plot on well things really ventured off in a direction that I hadn’t seen coming and I mean that in a positive way.
Once I became really caught up in Maddie’s story, the book turned from another run of the mill World War Two romance story into something that had twists and turns and real emotion and depth to it. I did guess at one aspect regarding the major twist but as to specific details as to how it came about I wasn’t near at all close to guessing. Therefore I was glad to be pleasantly surprised towards the end. One thing I will say though is that the blurb is slightly wrong in two of the instances it mentions and I feel it is misleading and perhaps the blurb should be rewritten or those bits cut out. Overall, Be Brave For Me was a good read and shows that Elaine Johns is a good writer that can write interesting, heartfelt and emotional books. The second book in the series, Promise You’ll Wait has also been published the same time as this first book and although I haven’t gotten around to reading it I hope to do so in the very near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment