Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Berlin, 1938.When Hanni’s beloved sister suddenly vanishes in the middle of the night, Hanni knows her high-ranking Nazi father, Reiner, is not telling her the whole truth and may hold the key to her disappearance.
Years later, after finally learning how to live with her troubled past, Hanni dedicates herself to raising her teenage son, Leo, but her sister is never far from her mind. But when Leo begins to share Reiner’s pro-Nazi views and runs away from home to meet his grandfather, Hanni’s world collapses in an instant. She is determined not to lose her son to her father’s cruelty, like she lost her darling sister all those years ago…
Hanni has tried to stop her father before and nearly lost her life. Now she is fighting for Leo too and the stakes are higher than ever. She can’t lose him to the Nazis. She won’t let her father take her son away from her. Hanni knows this is her last chance to bring her father to justice. With her son’s life hanging in the balance, Hanni knows this will be her toughest battle yet. But with Reiner’s popularity stronger than ever, will she succeed?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of Her Last Promise to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Catherine Hokin’s Hanni Winter series has been brilliant from start to finish and this new book, Her Last Promise, number four in the series, brings things to a fitting conclusion. Yes, there could be room for one more if the author really wanted to stretch things out a bit but I sincerely feel that would be overdoing things. The title couldn’t be more apt as Hanni has always had firmly in her mind one last item on her agenda. The final thing that she has promised herself that if successfully completed will bring things full circle and revenge will be achieved and be worth it for all the things her father Reiner has put her through. Not to mention it would mean so much to all those people whose lives he cruelly took through his desire to have a high position in the Nazi party. This story can be read as a standalone book if you really want to but now as it is the last book personally I feel it would be to your best advantage to go back and read the books one after the other if possible.
Her Last Promise is set in 1963 where Hanni and Freddy live in Berlin. They have been separated for many years and their relationship can be compared to the wall that divides their city of Berlin in two. They are close because of their son Leo, now aged 12 and very impressionable. Yet they are so far apart in terms of their physical and emotional relationship because Hanni finally admitted the truth to Freddy. It broke my heart when this occurred but given everything that had happened there really was no other course of action to take. Hanni continues her photography work and Freddy is a chief police inspector and they tentatively manage the present because they never revisit the past. A lot of shaky ground still stands between them where Freddy feels hurt, lost and betrayed. Secrets are never a good thing and when they come out in the open, they only cause untold problems and that is why they find themselves in the situation they are currently in.
There is a lot of background story as to the reasons for the void that exists between Freddy and Hanni. To say too much would give the entire storyline of the series away but suffice to say both their polarised experiences of the war have moulded them and being on opposite sides a such (not through choice on Hanni’s part) mean a way back to each other could be unattainable. Hanni knows the importance of telling the truth through pictures and she has reached the point where she doesn’t care anymore as the people that matter to her know the truth about her father Reiner. She knows deep in her heart that the time has come to bring things to a firm conclusion once and for all and even more so when Leo decides that he will join the school that Reiner has created. It’s not any normal school instead the ideology of the Nazi’s is taught to the children and they are brainwashed. How can Reiner be getting away with this and why has he not been brought to justice for everything? Things have got even more personal now that Leo is involved and Hanni and Freddy set out on a mission to get their son back and hopefully Reiner’s evil ways will be brought to light and he will get the come uppance he so justly deserves. I thought this quote summed up everything very well. ”The tree was diseased but the tree was still growing. The time had come to tear the tree down’.
Hanni needs to unpick her life in order to find out the truth. With Freddy by her side they make an incredible team and it makes you long even more for the pair to find their way back to each other. It was fascinating and quite frankly appalling what Hanni uncovers and learning more about her family particularly about her mother and sister was a real eye opener. But it felt now was the time for this angle of the story to be brought into the open. It wouldn’t have worked in the earlier books. Hanni ventures down a dark and dangerous road and takes you into spaces and a mindset that if she knew what was ahead of her she would probably just have abandoned the cause. But Hanni is full of determination, spirit, grit and bravery and she pushes herself beyond her boundaries. I found all the details regarding Hanni’s search for that one thing that she could conclusively pin Reiner to absolutely fascinating.
There was a quite frankly mind-blowing revelation that would just turn your stomach and leave you open mouthed with shock and Catherine Hokin was drawing the readers attention to a little-known aspect pre-war which had such a snowball effect for the war itself. I admired Hanni’s cunning and daring and she was clever in how she went about bringing Reiner’s downfall. Freddy’s sister Renny is mentioned in the story but I felt she didn’t play as prominent of a role as she could have. I understand the importance of her storyline but I felt she was very much out on her own agenda and wasn’t really listening to Freddy or Hanni but maybe she could say the same about the pair. To be honest, I was too caught up with Hanni’s storyline that I didn’t give much focus to Renny.
Without doubt, this has been one of the best historical fiction series I have read in a very long time. Catherine Hokin plotted and developed the entire story so well and it never felt like any of the storylines were there as a means to fill in pages. Rather everything gelled together so well. She knew where she was going with this series right from the very beginning and she expanded it from there to turn it into an incredible story that has you hooked from the very first word. What I found brilliant was that this didn’t focus specifically focus on the war years instead it showed us that the effects of the war ran deep for many many years. Freddy and Hanni’s story showed the reader the troubles that existed in post war Germany as the Nazi’s beliefs and the many people that fed into them didn’t just disappear over night. What both of them had been through altered their lives and when revelations came to the fore they in turn affected how Hanni and Freddy viewed one another.
Throughout this book you have your fingers crossed that they could hopefully find a way back to one another because it truly does break your heart that they are connected through Leo yet so far apart in other terms. Perseverance, strength, courage and tenacity are all emotions that spring to the surface whilst reading as well as hope and love. One-line mentions finishing with the past and writing a new future and that sums up Her Last Promise perfectly. You just hope that this aim can be achieved. Congratulations to Catherine Hokin for writing such a fabulous, gripping series, Hanni and Freddy are characters that I won’t forget in a hurry. Catherine, certainly has her work cut out for her in writing future books as this series will take something special to top it.
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