Let me preface this by saying that I love historical fiction having anything to do with Europe between the years 1900-1945. World War Two dramas are usually filled with such drama and atmosphere that I can't help but be excited by it. I'm not sure why, but I love it.

This book found me while I was on my French Resistance kick, and it's about a squad of British Female Spies that parachute into occupied France to aid in the Resistance. Sure, it's a mass-market paperback thriller, but it's a fun, fast-paced read and I love the authenticity of detail, from the description of the spy mindset while being followed, to the images of "ersatz coffee" that was used while regular coffee was being rationed. Ersatz coffee, by the way, was usually ground and roasted chicory. Not terribly tasty.

What intrigues me most about this book is what shocked me about the movie Charlotte Gray. Women are usually depicted as nurses and faithful homebodies during WWII. The fact that many women risked their lives and actually parachuted into France blows my mind. Most male soldiers didn't even parachute, let alone into occupied enemy territory.

I was excited to pick up this book by Follett, set in France during WWII, as I'm interested in that period of history and I really enjoyed this authors The Pillars of the Earth a few years ago. I have to say I didn't enjoy this as much. While the story kept me interested and I liked the central characters, especially the strong female protagonist, the writing just felt far too formulaic and, frankly, a bit lazy. This was a lazy holiday beach read for me and for that purpose was absolutely fine, but it's not a book I'd especially recommend.

This was terrible. The writing style reads like poor quality fan fiction. This book is rife with anachronisms, unrealistic dialogue, unnecessary (and poorly written) sex scenes, stereotypical and exploitative portrayals of LGBTQ individuals, and possibly one of the worst portrayals of British secret operations efforts during WWII that I have ever read.

I randomly came across this book because it mysteriously appeared on my Kindle thanks to an Amazon Prime freebie. Avoid.

4,5
Follett MASTER

Como é habitual, Ken Follet nunca desilude nos seus livros. Rendida desde a primeira página até à última. Com uma história intrigante, baseada em factos verídicos, e tão importantes para a nossa história.
Sem duvida cinco estrelas é pouco para conseguir classificar este livro, não só pela história mas também pela qualidade da escrita.
Cada vez mais apaixonada pelos livros deste senhor.
Por última, mais um aplauso pela forma como ele descreve o poder que as mulheres têm em transformar o mundo, que apesar de dominado em maioria por homens naquela altura (e, também nos dias que correm), as mulheres desempenharam um papel crucial para o fim da II Guerra Mundial.

Enjoyable yarn from Follett in the old Ken Follett style. Lots of twists, turns and tight jams in this book about British ladies who parachuted behind enemy lines to assist the French Resistance in the days prior to D-Day. Got a tad bit boring at one point in the book, but began moving right along during the last 200 or so pages. Always liked Follett and I am making an effort to read a lot of his older books.

Read for the 2024 PopSugar reading challenge. This is "The 24th book by an author," or at least it's my best guess at what was his 24th book based on my counting down by publication year on his Wikipedia page. If I was off a little bit... oops.

There's the core of a great story here. We open in media res about a week before D-Day as a cell of the French resistance launches an attack against a crucial German telephone exchange that's central to the ability to communicate back to high command when the imminently-expected Allied invasion of France finally arrives. Due to faulty intelligence, the attack is a bust and its British field agent liaison, nicknamed Flick and code named Leopardess, must return to London, report on the failure, and cobble together a desperate plan to try again, all while some members of the cell have been arrested and tortured and Flick's identity is blown.

It's not hard to catch some similarity to The Dirty Dozen but with women in the elevator pitch, especially when this includes literally going into a prison and grabbing a woman who's been accused of murder and bringing her into the military for the mission. This is the only convict who's trying for a new life, though. The remainder of the Jackdaws, as they are codenamed, are women who were, for one reason or another, rejected from either military or special operations service earlier in the war. Considering this book is published in 2001, it's much more progressive in its representation than I would have expected, as within the short time that the team is brought together, two of them whirl into an F/F romance and a third member of the team is actually a drag performer who is a gay man. Although the drag bit is mined for humor somewhat, it's not "Look at these freaks" humor, it's "Flick's heteronormative assumptions led her to make mistakes" humor.

The best parts of this book are the cat-and-mouse spy vs. spy stuff between Flick and a German counterintelligence officer who happens to be in the village at the time of the initial attack on the telephone exchange. Major Franck thinks of himself as more cultured and refined than the boorish Gestapo, but he's still a Nazi who tortures people (or directs the torture of people) to make his hay and there's no question he's evil. He's also, unfortunately, clever, which does make for a lot of tension as Flick arranges the Jackdaws and eventually carries out the second attempt at the crucial mission of sabotage. With the book being dedicated to 14 British women who lost their lives on secret missions in France during World War II, and with the last page of the book being a bit from a real history that explained women were not eligible for the combat award the Military Cross, it's clear that this is something of a passion project on Follett's part to have created a story that shows the kind of heroism that was not officially allowed to exist for women when honors were given out after the war. I think on this level it was certainly a success.

Where it gets bogged down is when it attempts to add to the stakes of the book by creating a lot of personal emotional drama of who is hot for who. None of the characters involved are particularly interesting enough to either care about who they like or who likes them. I don't think it gets the interactions within the military hierarchy quite right either. At different points in the book, Flick has a meeting that includes Monty (Field Marshal Montgomery) and Franck goes and meets with Rommel and this all feels way too casual.

This offering of Ken Follett, while not up to Eye of the Needle or The Pillars of the Earth was nevertheless a good book to have on a trip with many delays due to weather and mechanical problems.

It chronicles the travails of a group of British women who are tasked to destroy a German telephone exchange just before D-Day, important because it was the main conduit for most of the military phone traffic between France and Berlin .

The plot is well-developed but I find Follett's characterizations to be a little less than believable. I like my heroes to have more warts. My two biggest problems with the story are the incredible number of coincidences that work in the saboteurs' favor and the various love interest sub-plots that add melodrama but very little else to the narrative.

While certainly better than some of his later offerings like Code to Zero, This book did not motivate me to read more of Follett's work than I have already read.

Très bon

I am an avid reader. My husband, not so much. This is one of the few books that he brought into our married bookshelves, and that's because he had to read it for a class. I read anything I can get my little hands on, so I grabbed this one up.

I loved it. I loved the main characters, the gathering of the team, the constant action, all that friction.... everything. It kept me excited and I couldn't put it down. I love tough, unique, women characters and this was full of them. I feel like it'd be a great movie- spy/war stuff for the guys and several little romances and girl power for the gals.

Now that I've read Pillars of the Earth and this one, I won't hesitate to read others by Ken Follett because I've really enjoyed both of these.

The actual WWII espionage parts of the story were engaging and at times clever, but there is an unnecessary and unexpected amount of sexual energy that distracts from the war story. I had also hoped for more focus on the team of women that the book is about.