Front Lines (Soldier Girl, #1) (The Front Lines, #1)

by Michael Grant

[readingwithwrin]

Due to things this author has said in the past, I will not be continuing this series or supporting any of his future work.

"See, Gentle Reader, I know the rules of war stories. I know I'm supposed to present a tale of patriotism, of high-minded motives and brave deeds, hardships endured with a stiff upper lip and a wry grin. I'm supposed to tell you about the brotherhood- and now sisterhood- of soldiers. But there's one thing I cannot do as I pound these typewriter keys, and that is lie. "

See reviews first on my blog

When I first heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. Front Lines is an alternate history of WWII where women were allowed to be drafted and fight in the war.
It follows three main characters:
Rio Richlin – a California farm girl talked into joining the war by her best friend Jenou.
Frankie Marr- An African American girl who joins due to family reasons. She wants to be a medic.
Rainy Schulterman- A Jewish-American who wants to be an intelligence officer, and to destroy the Germans.
It switches points of view every few chapters, but Rio gets focused on the most.

We also have important side characters that each of the girls has. They end up making the story even better, and even funny moments happen. We see them become comrades with the men and gain respect as time goes on.

We follow the women though enlisting, training, and then one battle in the war. We see the struggles they face each different in their own ways.
Rio faces the general disgruntled-ness of the men about women being allowed to fight and the hardships that come with that. Plus the hardships of training and living away from home for the first time ever, and the added in fear of going to war. Once at war she not only excels at what she was taught but does better than the men. Which causes the men to get upset at her, and blame everything else but themselves on why she did better than the.
Frangie not only has to deal with being a woman enlisted, but also the prejudice of being black. She also really struggles with the physical part of the training, but excels at others. With the help of an older Sergeant, she gets what she wants, but that is just the beginning of her struggle and she will suffer the most out of any of the girls.
We don’t get much of Rainy’s story compared to the other two. We know that she gets to be in intelligence, but it just ends up being a glorified secretary until her ability to speak German is needed and then she is immediately moved to a different department, where she gets to translate and later on even deliver a message to a set of troops.
The girls don’t all meet until almost the end of the book, but when they do, they band together and take a German hostage.

“Now I know why they never let women fight wars, Too mean.”

Grant did an amazing job, of telling this story. This isn’t just a story of a woman fighting in the war, it also seems pretty accurate with war details, and at the back Grant even lists all of the books he used for references. It does get graphic at times, but that was to be expected with a war story and makes it seem all the more real.


"It's coming to and end, this war, but I still have a lot of story to tell. There's Sicily and Italy and France yet to write about. A whole lot of war there."