Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Bruised and gasping for air, Cora Mayhew struggles to her feet, shaking glass from her hair. Clutching a fine silver locket, surrounded by passengers crying out for their loved ones, Cora knows she must find a way to post the heart-wrenching letter she’s been clutching in her hand and get back to her beloved family in America.
For months she’s seen the flashes in the night sky and heard the drone of planes. She came to Paris to search for her birth mother – the locket her only clue – and stayed to work for the secret resistance movement, helping others escape the horrors of war. But now, staggering from the wreckage, Cora fears she too should have left Paris sooner.
Just as her spirit starts to slip, a German soldier finds Cora and saves her life. Max Heller is everything a Nazi shouldn’t be: kind, good-humoured and selfless. As he helps her plot her escape from France, Cora can’t help but fall for him – even though she knows she shouldn’t lose her heart to an enemy soldier…
Then the discovery of a devastating secret about her birth mother forces her to confront a painful truth. Max is the only one who can help her, and the contents of her letter are too important not to make it out of Paris. But should she place her trust in the enemy, or go it alone and risk never making it out alive? And does escaping from Paris mean she will never see Max again…?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Last Letter from Paris to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Within the first few chapters of The Last Letter from Paris by Kate Eastham, the names of some of the characters started to ring a bell with me. As I read so many books each year, specific details can evade me so I stopped and checked and discovered that Iris and Evie had featured in the author’s previous book The Sea Nurses. Even reading the brief prologue some of the information seemed familiar and I was glad to discover the return of much loved characters as I had felt there was definitely another story that could be told centred around these characters. This new book is a standalone though and it wouldn’t in any way feel as if you were missing out by not having read the first book.
This time around the story moves to World War Two and acknowledges how the lives of both Evie and Iris have unfolded since we left them at the end of World War One.Cora, the foundling adopted by Evie having been left by a Frenchwoman at a pier in Southampton, is now grown up and loves her life with Evie and her husband Adam in Montauk in America. But not knowing anything about her true heritage and who her mother was and how she came to be abandoned has long eaten away at her. She desperately wants to know all the details and one day she will go to France to try and find all the answers to the questions that have haunted her.
June 1940 and Iris has spent many years living in Paris following her time spent on the hospital ship Britannic. Her German husband has passed away but she is reluctant to leave the city where he is buried and she can be close to him and visit daily. Cora has for nearly a year being staying with Iris and until now she has enjoyed working in the American library but times are changing with the beginning of a new war. The Germans have marched into the city of light and the carefree days the Parisians enjoyed are over and done with. Iris finds it hard to comprehend that war once again has reached her doorstep as the memories and raw emotions from the previous war are still very much fresh in her mind.
For Cora, this time in Paris was a chance to grow independent and find her true self. Her mission to find out who her mother was and where she came from is at the forefront of her mind but given there was such scant details this to me seemed like attempting to find a needle in a haystack. I presumed the book would focus solely on her quest but as the rumblings of war grew ever present and danger, brutality, devastation, pain and suffering emerge each day the longing she has is put to the back of her mind as she tries to navigate this new world she finds herself in.
I found the book was like a ship riding through the waves, there were many peaks and troughs and lulls. It seemed that at points nothing much happened and then there was a resolution of sorts to some aspect of the story and I thought oh this happened too early and where can the story go from here. But the author took Cora on an adventure and not one full of laughs and pleasurable moments. Instead she is tested to the max and those she loves worry deeply about her as she does too when the worst happens. German soldiers take over Iris’ beautiful apartment and she is taken away with news of her whereabouts and the reason for imprisonment unknown. Cora has but a few brief moments to grab what she can and make her way to the home of Francine a long time friend of both Evie and Iris, who herself lost her husband in the last war. Francine was a wise woman and to all appearances old and just getting on with her life in Paris but appearances can deceptive and Cora soon finds that Francine is astute and well able to play the game and do her bit to stop the Germans. Here is where I felt the story really started to take off as Cora shows her true metal.
Cora is fierce, determined and headstrong and the restlessness and need to search for something drives her on. Yet at times, I found she put herself in dangerous situations unnecessarily and there was also a naivety about her. She didn’t often think of the bigger picture before she acted and as she becomes involved in the Resistance movement and although I applauded her for this I found her to be quite careless when others were trying to keep her safe whilst continuing their work. Karl, the German soldier who took over Iris’ apartment, becomes a dominant feature in Cora’s strand of the story and she is determined to avenge what he has done. She has a hatred for him that fuels her as the things take a very dramatic turn and she must flee from the city which she loved. She can’t bare to leave Iris behind not knowing whether she is alive or dead but her own life she has to put first.
Running alongside the exploits of Cora in France are chapters from Evie’s viewpoint back in America. She is distraught when she learns that Cora has gone missing on the day the Germans invaded the city. She feels helpless that she is so many miles away across the ocean unable to do anything but wander the coastline hoping and wish that things will turn out ok. I found at times going back to Evie disrupted the flow of the story when things were really getting going from Cora’s viewpoint. I understand they were there to show the connection between mother and adopted daughter and the love they had for each other and that Evie was desperate to know that someone who meant the world to her could not possibly be gone forever. There was a streak of anger in Evie too, that Cora didn’t heed the advice and get out of Paris before the Germans arrived. I think also in a way she was jealous that Cora could potentially discover news of her birth mother and that this would take her away from Evie. I felt the story would have worked perfectly without these chapters from Evie’s viewpoint but as I mentioned I do understand the reasoning for their inclusion.
The second half of the book was far stronger than the first and here is where I felt the story found its rhythm and true purpose. Cora swings from one disaster to another in her bid to evade Karl and make it to safety after an incident which turns everything on its head. I found the chapters from the midpoint to be much more taut than the earlier chapters. They were filled with information that drove the story on and there was less filler as I had found there to be quite a bit initially. Violence, inhumanity, danger, secrets and daring are all predominant features and you find yourself thinking with each turn of the page is this it for Cora? Has she taken things too far as she finds herself in numerous precarious situations? I found my reading speed picked up as I neared the final few chapters and I finally had become really invested in the outcome for Cora. The blurb mentions Max and to be honest I think the blurb needs to be rewritten in some parts because to me Max featured for such a short time and the blurb gives the impression it was for a good chunk of the book. For me, it was more about Cora getting to the safety of her end destination when all seemed lost as well as she hopefully discovering what happened to Iris.
The ending of the book was in my mind rushed and I would have loved some more exploration and again I was left with the feeling that there is room for another story. There are one or two burning questions surrounding Cora that I am desperate for answers to. I hope we will get these in the future. If not in a full-length book even a short story would suffice to satisfy my curiosity. Overall, The Last Letter from Paris, was a good read. It’s a story of daring and survival with some romance at a time when the word was falling apart and those existing in the most torrid of times did remarkable and amazing things when everything was firmly against them.
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