*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: Her Forgotten Promise
Author: Corin Burnside
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: ★★★★
A wartime secret. A journey to uncover the truth.
Claire has always had a special bond with her aunt
Margaret, but she’s astonished when Margaret suddenly begins talking about a
friend called Agnes, who Margaret met working as a WAAF in World War 2 – a past
Claire had no idea about. Margaret and Agnes were best friends until Agnes
started acting strangely, becoming secretive and distant. Then one morning,
Agnes vanished and never returned home, leaving Margaret distraught.
Claire promises to delve back into the past and help discover what happened to Agnes. But Margaret’s memory is rapidly deteriorating, and apart from an old photograph of the two women, Agnes seems to have disappeared into thin air. Can Claire uncover Agnes’ story before it’s too late?
Her Forgotten Promise is the debut novel from author Corin Burnside.
It is a beautiful story of love and loss which is as heartbreaking as it is heartwarming.
Our story is told through a dual-timeline narrative, moving between 2014 and the
1940s, as Claire tries to uncover the mystery of where Agnes went once her aunt
Margaret lost contact with her during the war.
To say that this is Corin Burnside’s debut work is truly
amazing. She has a real gift for storytelling and her vivid descriptions made the
rural French setting come alive on the page and had me fully immersed within
the story. The narrative is perfectly paced, the writing flows effortlessly and
the history was also clearly very well researched. I’m really looking forward
to seeing more from her as an author, she’s earnt hirself a firm place on my ‘Authors
To Watch’ list!
From the synopsis I was not expecting a beautiful sapphic
romance to be at the centre of the story and I’m a big fan of LGBTQIA+
representation within historical fiction so this was a pleasant surprise. Although
I will say that omitting Agnes and Margaret’s romance from the marketing of the
book did feel like an example of ‘history will say they were… roommates’ meme!
Their friends to lovers love story was so beautiful that I thought it was a
shame it was not shouted about in the synopsis and marketing.
Her Forgotten Promise is full of strong female characters who
were all beautifully written with lots of depth to them. Agnes was a fantastic
character with admiral courage, strength and tenacity. Through her I think Corin
Burnside perfectly portrayed the incredible courage of the female SOE agents operating
within the German-occupied countries during the war. I also loved Margaret as a
character and thought she was fantastically written as both a young woman and
an elderly woman. I did find myself struggling initially to warm to Claire,
confused as to why she’d neglected to visit an elderly woman who had played
such an important role in her life, but this began to change as the novel
progressed and I ended up really enjoying her chapters.
One of my only criticisms would be that there were too many coincidences
driving the plot which made it feel unrealistic at times. I also felt that the
plot point surrounding Claire’s ex-husband and his new partner unnecessarily
took our focus away from Agnes and Margaret. Whilst it did give us good mental
health representation through the portrayal of Claire’s experiences of panic
attacks, it largely felt rather pointless and like it would have been better to
simply say she was recently divorced and leave it at that.
Overall, Her Forgotten Promise is a fantastic debut historical
fiction novel from Corin Burnside which combines themes of love, loss and
courage into a fast-paced story about SOE work in wartime France. It is a
must-read for fans of historical fiction.
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