The Alice Network by Kate Quinn 5****

Pages: 503

Genre: Historical fiction

When I finished the epilogue of this brilliant book, liberating tears immediately rolled down my cheeks!

Have you ever gotten so caught up in a story that it almost hurt to let go of the characters? Have you ever experienced a liberating weep? I hadn't before. I didn't even realise it had been building inside me since I started the book, but apparently, it had.

And boy, was it good to get it out! I think Eve deserved my tears, but especially Louise De Bettignies and all the brave women who fought and gave their lives for our freedom in WWI and WWII!

Now that I've got that off my chest, let me tell you about this little masterpiece!

This is the story of a young girl called Eve who joins the Alice Network in France during the First World War. This network was a Ring of British spies led by a heroic woman called Louise De Bettignies.

We follow young Eve during her years in Lille as she spies on the Germans while working for an unscrupulous Frenchman, René, in a local café!

The book switches from her story in 1915 to 1947, when we meet Charlie, an upper middle class American, pregnant and 19 years old, who is searching for her missing cousin Rose. Somehow her search leads her to the now alcoholic, trigger-happy Eve. As sparks quickly fly between the two headstrong women, they soon realise they may have a common enemy! Enter Finn Kilgore, Eve's brooding Scottish driver, and what you get is one of the best trios of characters I've come across in a book!

Quinn has woven a heartbreaking tale of love, sacrifice, betrayal and revenge, peppered with her usual humour, meticulous research and an unquenchable thirst to prove women's courage to the world!