High as the Heavens

by Kate Breslin

[readingwithwrin]

"She was caught between two worlds: the one her desperation had forced upon her, and the other a world she's once dreamed of sharing with him. "


If you loved Not By Sight than you'll love this book to!



"She was doing far more than simply helping her mother's people; she was playing a dangerous game with high stakes."


Eve is a young woman, who lost her husband very early on in WWI. After losing him she went to live with her mother and young siblings in Belgium. Where tragedy ended up striking once again. This lead to another move with her mother to live with a different Aunt and Uncle. After what happened in both of these major life events, Eve is rattled and heartbroken. She is going through the motions of being a Red Cross nurse and a spy. That is until one night on a mission a plane crashes and she rushes to help thinking it could be the persons he was supposed to meet. But who it really is will not only give her the surprise of her life but also make her start taking even more risks.

"Now her decisions struck him as tactical. Her mind weighed options with cool reason, making life-and-death decisions and taking incredible risks."

Overall I really loved this book. I ended up caring so much for not only Eve, but her family and friends. While we mainly see things from her perspective we occasionally see things from others points of view as well. For me, this always make it so much more enjoyable because we get to see more of what is happening the place that we are and to see how others are dealing with the same type of struggles. The romance was a side part of the story once again and I love that in books so much! Instead, the focus was on Eve's work as a nurse and a spy and trying to find her younger siblings all while keeping herself and her family out of harm's way. When it came to finding out who was making things difficult for those in the spy group, I was surprised by who it was and was pretty upset that they would do such a thing. For those worried about the religious parts of this book, I hardly noticed any mention of God or religion, until we got to the end and even then it was brief. This is more of a story about the struggles faced during WWI and how some people might have survived.

"I couldn't let another boy lose his life because of me. I have been lost for a long time, husband. I had to find my way back. Today, God gave me that change."

While this story is a work of fiction Eve was based off of three incredible woman in WWI: Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Petit, and Martha Mckenna who I will be trying to learn more about now.
WWI books are hard to find in the fiction world for the most part until recently. This is something that I'm really enjoying, while we know a lot about WWII, what I know about WWI is minimal and it is slowly changing with the help of books like this. This time in with the fact that nurses would sneak out allied patients to keep them from becoming POW. Also flashlights/torches were also starting to be used at this time. (They got the name flashlights because the battery life wasn't the best meaning they would turn them on and off quickly to make them last longer.)

I'm so happy to see that Breslin learned from her book For Such A Time (I'll be posting a review for this on the June 12), to not make a romance happen between certain people.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bethany House for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.


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