#BlogTour: Solitaire by Jane Thynne @janethynne @simonschusterUK

I’m so pleased to be able to bring you my blog tour review for Solitaire by Jane Thynne.  I have heard a lot of great things about her books and was thrilled to be invited onto the blog tour for her most recent book.  Thank you to the lovely Abby Fairbrother for recommending me!

Solitaire is available now in paperback and ebook here.

Book Blurb:

TO SAVE HER OWN LIFE, WILL SHE SACRIFICE ANOTHER?

June 1940: the first summer of the war. Berlin is being bombed and nightly blackouts suffocate the city. Then France falls and a shadow descends.

A shadow has fallen over Clara Vine’s own life, too. She is an Anglo-German woman in a country that hates England. Then she is summoned to meet the Propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who has decided that Clara should adopt a new role – as his spy.

Much as she dislikes the idea, Clara realises this might be the chance to find an escape route to England. But Goebbels has other ideas and soon Clara is drawn into a web that threatens to destroy her. As everything she holds dear is taken as ransom, she must fight to protect her family – and to survive…

Solitaire delivers brilliantly engrossing wartime fiction for fans of  Sadie Jones, Rosie Thomas and Irene Nemirovsky.

My Review:

As a huge fan of historical fiction I can’t believe I haven’t read anything by Jane Thynne before.  I have heard some great things about her books but for some reason have never actually got around to reading anything by her.  I’m on a bit of a role with books at the moment as this was another 5 star read for me.

I have read a lot of world war two fiction but not much about what life was like inside of Germany for ordinary people during the war and not much from the German point of view.  I therefore found this book really fascinating.  It was very interesting to realise how much Hitler influenced people’s everyday life in areas, that perhaps naively, I hadn’t realised that they influence before which was a bit of an eye opener.  This is especially true about their treatment of influential people who happened to be married to Jews and the steps that were taken to try and break up this relationship.  It was also very interesting to learn more about some of the high ranking Nazi members, their personal lives and their jobs during the war.  I had obviously heard a bit about them before reading this book but not in a lot of depth so i enjoyed learning more about what was happening behind the scenes for them and more about the policies they were in charge of during the war.

The author has clearly done her research into this time with all the people and events in the book being real things that actually happened.  I love being able to look up people and events from a book and being able to learn more about them.  I was able to do this a lot with this book and lost many an evening to learning more about the characters and events mentioned.  I had heard about the appalling treatment of the Polish people by the Nazi’s during the war but from what I have read previously I thought this was only in the concentration camps so it was interesting to learn that the mistreatment of them was present in everyday life.  It’s little details like this which sets apart this authors work and kept me thoroughly intrigued and increased my enjoyment.

As I might have mentioned before I love strong female characters and I was therefore a huge fan of Clara Vine, a strong confident women who wasn’t afraid of putting herself in difficult situations.  This was especially impressive in a time when women were very much thought of as inferior to men and when the Nazi’s seemed to prefer women who stayed at home, kept house and had loads of children.  I liked that she had a lot of empathy and didn’t just think of herself and how a situation would benefit her, but tried to get the best results for all involved.  I didn’t always understand her actions and did find myself getting a little frustrated with her when she made decisions that I didn’t agree with but the author was always able to explain Clara’s actions and made me understand why she had made them.  I also liked Katerina who I felt both sorry for and had huge admiration for.  It was very poignant to learn how such children came to be living in orphanages when they had living relatives and shocking to learn how some children were taken from their parent’s purely because of how they looked.  Her need to find family and to try and find her sister was really lovely to read about and I was very impressed with how far she was willing to go to find this.

This is the 5th book in the Clara Vine series but the first book that I have read.  It definitely won’t be my last and I will look forward to reading more from Jane Thynne in the future.  Despite being part of a series I found that this book read easily as a stand alone book, as anything that had happened in previous books that I needed to know was explained.  This would be a fantastic book group book as I think there would be a lot for people to discuss and that it would appeal to a lot of people.

Huge thanks to Sian Devine, Simon & Schuster publisher and Jane Thynne for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto this blog tour.  If you like gripping and fascinating historical fiction that is brilliantly researched you will love this book.

About The Author:

Jane Thynne was born in Venezuela and educated in London. She graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English and joined the BBC as a journalist. She has also worked at The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent, as well as for numerous British magazines. She appears as a broadcaster on Radio 4. Jane is married to the writer Philip Kerr. They have three children and live in London.

Find out more at http://www.janethynne.com connect with her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter @janethynne

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