Map of the Heart by Susan Wiggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4+stars
This is a well written novel with a compelling storyline and mysteries to solve. It moves between present day and WWII. Dual storylines can often be bothersome and confusing but the author, Susan Wiggs, is gifted by an ability to write them so they are easy to follow, interesting, and well organized. Another of her gifts is creating believable, true-to-life characters and their relationships with each other. Kudos to her for a captivating story and respectable romance without gratuitous sex scenes and foul language. Although I am really tired of finding requisite lgbtq+ characters in nearly every novel, film, or sitcom I've experienced in recent years, Wiggs handles this tastefully. This novel is what I'd call a good beach read.

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Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars.
Historical fiction, this is an account of an extraordinary woman, Australian nurse and journalist, Nancy Wake. A WWII heroine, she served in the French Resistance, and later the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and briefly pursued a post-war career as an intelligence officer in the Air Ministry. She was fierce, and she did amazing, unbelievable things, including killing a Nazi officer with her bare hands. She was irreplaceable to Britain's command and financing of the French Resistance. She operated under 4 different code names: LUCIENNE CARLIER, THE WHITE MOUSE, HÉLÈNE, and "as the deadly MADAM ANDRÉ, where she claims her place as one of the most powerful leaders in the French Resistance, armed with a ferocious wit, her signature red lipstick, and the ability to summon weapons straight from the Allied Forces." The enemy was never able to figure out that the 4 names belonged to one and the same woman. She was so successful in her missions that the Reich had a five million franc price put on her head.
It is also a story of her courtship and marriage to French industrialist, Henri Fiocca.
The story itself is fascinating but the telling of it was frustrating with too much descriptive writing and its non-chronological jumping back and forth in place and in time, from 1936 to 1944, in between, and back again. There is an abundance of profanity and graphic scenes of wartime torture. I listened to the audio book.


You can read about Nancy here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...

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The Guest List by Lucy Foley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fun atmospheric thriller which takes the points of view of all the characters, interweaving them past and present, with their secrets, lies, fears, and jealousies in such a way as to make them all suspect. It could have been a 5 star rating if there had been more careful editing, but there were several plot holes and some incidents which just didn't match up in the end. Nevertheless I really enjoyed it and would not hesitate to recommend it. I listened to the the audio book which was well done.

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