The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Alice Network is a WWII novel that takes place in France, which is my favorite time period and location, so this one was bound to be a winner for me. But please bear with me – I am playing catch up with my posts, so they won’t be as detailed as some of my previous posts.

Charlie is a young woman in trouble and is desperately looking for her cousin Rose, who disappeared during WWII. Charlie finds the name of Eve Gardiner and is led to believe that Eve can help her find Rose. Eve lives in a decrepit home in London in a drunken stupor and wants nothing to do with Charlie – until Charlie says a name that instantly takes Eve back to her time as a spy in WWI.

From there, Charlie and Eve travel across Europe, with Charlie hoping to find Rose and Eve hoping to avenge her old wounds. The timeline forks – we switch back and forth between Eve’s experiences as a spy in WWI and their search for Rose just after WWII. Eve was a part of “The Alice Network” – a network of female spies in France who were an important part of the Nazi Resistance.

This was just so much fun to read. I love reading about the experiences of women during the war and haven’t often read much about women spies during WWI. Some of the scenes were heart stopping and terrifying. The author did a great job researching women spies and pulled from a lot of real experiences, which made this all the more believable. On a lighter note, there was a delicious love story that I just ate up! This is our current book club selection at work and I love hearing from my co-workers as they start and then finish it. Listening to them, it seems that most agree that it was difficult to put down and enthralling to read about the women of the resistance!