Sisters at War by Clare Flynn

Sisters at War

By Clare Flynn

1940 Liverpool. The pressures of war threaten to tear apart two sisters traumatised by their father’s murder of their mother.

With her new husband, Will, a merchant seaman, deployed on dangerous Atlantic convoy missions, Hannah needs her younger sister Judith more than ever. But when Mussolini declares war on Britain, Judith's Italian sweetheart, Paolo is imprisoned as an enemy alien, and Judith's loyalties are divided.

Each sister wants only to be with the man she loves but, as the war progresses, tensions between them boil over, and they face an impossible decision.

A heart-wrenching page-turner about the everyday bravery of ordinary people during wartime. From heavily blitzed Liverpool to the terrors of the North Atlantic and the scorched plains of Australia, Sisters at War will bring tears to your eyes and joy to your heart.

Everything has something that goes together hand in hand. Romance has heartbreak, joy has sadness, life has death. This book has everything.

Hannah and Will Kidd are a young couple so drastically affected by the war. Will’s job requires him to spend most of his life at sea, and Hannah can do nothing but clean the house and hope that he returns in one piece, or even, that he returns at all.

Judith, Hannah’s sister, might act tough, having distanced herself from Hannah after the death of their mother by their father’s hands, but she longs for the feeling of love. She finds that with Paolo, an Italian who once served on the same ship as Will. But, when the British start rounding up all Italians, on the basis that they may be fascists, Paolo is ripped away from Judith.

Judith and Hannah are very much in the same boat (no pun intended). Both have had their loved one taken away from them, and, although Will leaves by choice, neither can help but feel such an intense feeling of loss with their beloveds so far away.

I adored this novel because it does not gloss over the horrors of the war. Not everyone gets a happy ending, and some chapters will leave you reeling. I honestly could not put this book down, and I read it in a day.

This is an absolutely brilliant book, and I cannot wait to look into some other books by this author.

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