Published By: Bantam
Pages: 352
Released On: 09/07/2026
Munich, 1938. As dark shadows gather at the fringe of the traditional Oktoberfest revelry, Julia Ormesby finds herself falling in love with Conrad von Echlau. Later, on the eve of war, they are forced to recognise that the weight of history leaves them little chance of a life together.
Julia moves from rescuing refugees to a pivotal role at Bletchley Park, while Conrad is awarded the Knight’s Cross for the capture of a crucial Allied stronghold on the Belgian border. When he is selected for a top secret mission on the Suffolk coast, their destinies collide once more.
Immediately after Dunkirk, the nation is gripped by the fear of enemy invasion — so Churchill’s intelligence chiefs have decreed that every member of von Echlau’s incoming unit must die.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Bantam for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
Ooooh I love a good war time romance. Although it’s less on the romance than I thought it would be.
Jamie used to work for the then-Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, now Prince and Princess of Wales, and I’m a huge royalty nerd so this instantly earned at least one gold star.
I don’t know how much is historically true or how much is fictionalised, but if it is true, it’s an event of the war that I knew nothing about, which was interesting.
It’s quite uncomfortable at first. I’ll try not to put out-and-out spoilers here, so bear with me. It starts just before the war when a lot of Germans in particular believe that what Hitler was proposing was a positive, that it would make everything easier and better for them. So to read it now, knowing what he went on to do…reading all this praise and love and adoration for him is hard to swallow.
It’s a little heavy on the description. I know you need to set the scene, describe the setting and whatnot, but what I didn’t need was pages of description of what was on the sideboard or the different types of weapons used etc. It slows the story down a bit. It wasn’t enough to affect my rating of the book but it’s still something I noted.
It does expect the reader to have some moderate understanding of the intricacies of the war, but even if you don’t know much detail, I still think you’ll enjoy it.
I’m proud to say that my learning of German is paying off!
It’s intense. From the romance to the fighting to the resistance. Yet he manages to find the right balance before it gets confusingly overwhelming. It does slow down about halfway, it’s a little more calculating than full-on action which helps balance the busier scenes.
British people see us as goodies and the Nazis as baddies, and as a Brit, I agree. But the Nazis believed they were the goodies. And what this book gives us is both sides of the story, puts more humans to the horror stories, and I found that fascinating.
I could see it being made into a spectacular TV series or movie. It’s got big scenes but also great relationships and characters and quieter moments. It also sounds very beautiful, which I know sounds weird when he’s describing warfare, but Jamie has hit the right balance of everything relaly.
The scenes do flip between the English stories and the German, but it doesn’t say at the top of each section whose story you’re reading, which I would have liked as it would have made it immediately clear whose world you were in, but that’s not a huge problem.
You think you’ve read all the war books, everything about the code breakers and whatnot. That no matter how good the writing is, is it just rehashing what’s already there? Well, it does have elements of the familiar, obviously, but he’s still managed to make it feel new and fresh and I think that’s down to the wonderfully written and instantly likeable characters.
I believe this is his debut and what a debut it is. I truly hope he continues writing novels, especially war ones, as he’s got such a way with words.
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