Advance excitement

Wake by Anna Hope

Twitter can be a source of many things but for me this week it was the cause of a late night and tears.  Not because I was a victim of Internet bullying but because of a book sent to me by the publicist @alisonbarrow from Transworld.

Despite knowing that I had a long day at work ahead once I'd started reading Hope's Wake there was no way that I could stop reading it until I'd got to the end. Compelling and a war story - sleep didn't stand a chance!

The main action takes place in the week leading up to the burial of the Unknown Warrior on Armistice Day 1920, but to tell the story we go back to the action in World War One.

I've read many books set during WW1 and many of them stop as the guns fall silent and then pick up the story many years into the future, if they go beyond that at all. The idea of seeing how people coped in the few years just after the war was a fascinating idea and handled so much better than in another recent proof that I read.

At first I didn't warm to the female characters, I couldn't see at all how they could be connected realistically but slowly and cleverly the story unfolded and I was sniffling several times during the novel.

It sounds glib to call this an easy read but it managed to get the tragedy of fighting and dying in a war, as well as the tragedy of surviving a war, across without needing a lot of description of the horrors.  What is left unsaid is more effective than detailed description.

The descriptions of some of the post war activities mean that this is still definitely a book for adults despite the lack of violence/horror, and it is going to appeal to women more than men but they are my only less than positive comments for what was a great read.

It is a brave move to bring out a book about the end of the First World War in the year that we commemorate 100 years since the start but I hope that the book (and author) get the attention that it deserves.

**Although this review is for a book I was sent to read/review I haven't been paid for this blogpost and the views really are what I felt for the book.**