*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity.
Title: The Officer's Wife
Author: Catherine Law
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: ★★
The Officer’s Wife
is the story of Vivi Miles, an American heiress who has a whirlwind romance with
naval officer Nathan and they quickly marry before he leaves to join his ship. But
when Nathan returns from Dunkirk injured he is distant and Vivi suspects he’s
hiding more than his wartime experiences. But could it be linked to the
mysterious evacuees Vivi has discovered are secretly living in a remote cottage
in the wood on Nathan’s estate?
I want to preface
this review with the fact that I did want to love this book. As an avid reader
of historical fiction (particularly of books set during World War Two) the
concept really interested me and I thought the air of mystery surrounding the
identity of the mysterious evacuees added something really different to your
usual WW2 fiction story. But unfortunately, the book really missed the mark for
me and I was left really disappointed.
One of the biggest
issues I had with the book was that although it was centered around Vivi and Nathan’s
relationship, their relationship was so flawed that it was so difficult to root
for from the very beginning. They have a real whirlwind romance and don’t
actually see each other between their first meeting, getting engaged and
getting married, instead only communicating via letter. As passionate as I am
about the power of the written word, a mere forty letters to each other does
not seem like a solid basis for a marriage so it was a given that their
relationship was going to have its troubles. Whilst I appreciate that in
wartime Europe whirlwind romances leading to quick weddings was relatively
common, the speed of this marriage seemed particularly ridiculous and their
relationship very difficult to root for from the get-go.
The second relationship
in the story is between Elise and Nathan and again it was really difficult to
root for as we see very little interaction between them, even though it is
implied that they get to know each other fairly well as the story progresses. Seeing
such little of them made it even harder to comprehend why Nathan would show a
woman he’d briefly met once as a child more affection in a single air raid than
he did to his actual wife.
The characters in the
story lacked really any real depth whatsoever and felt ultimately really
unlikeable. I was hopeful that in Vivi we’d get a strong female protagonist but
in reality she was naïve and immature. Her anger at her husband for being away
at war and not there to support her, despite marrying him in full knowledge he
was actively serving in the navy, showed such immaturity. You really wanted her
to be the strong support her husband needed after returning from war with the
trauma that experiencing something like Dunkirk would have brought but she was
pretty useless to be honest. She had a slight reprieve towards the end of the
story with how she stood by her husband but it ultimately felt like a little
too late. I found Genna and Dornie to be two of the only likeable characters in
the book, aside from Robin and his father, and thought it a shame that we saw
so little of them.
In Nathan we had the potential
to have a really interesting and powerful exploration of the psychological impact
of war, particularly as a result of his experiences at Dunkirk, but this unfortunately
wasn’t well executed. It wasn’t really taken beyond descriptions of him being
distant and aloof and we saw very little of how he started to recover in order
to return to work. I thought that this was the biggest disappointment in the
story as it had the potential to set the story apart from other historical
fiction works of a similar nature.
The story felt
incredibly rushed and therefore lacked any real depth to it. Certain aspects of
the story – such as the circumstances surrounding the death of Nathan’s father –
felt skipped over despite having the potential to be really interesting and
this was disappointing. We had frequent jumps forward in the timeline and frequent
changes of perspective with no real structure to the narrative and this made it
difficult to keep track of the progression of the story. Whilst being mindful
of avoiding spoilers, I thought the choice to give Elise the ending that she
got was a distasteful and badly written solution to Vivi and Nathan’s fertility
problems and it ultimately resulted in me finishing the book with a bad taste
in my mouth.
Overall, The Officer’s Wife was a really interesting concept but it was disappointing overall.
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