gr8reader 's review for:

The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
5.0

Although this started slowly (felt like it would take weeks to read), I soon found myself thinking about the characters when I wasn't reading. This is a story that goes into war and you know that there will be deaths......the questions are Who? When? How? I was heartbroken over a couple of them. It did not get as gruesome as it could have in the war descriptions, in fact, it was very tame. During the chapters about the war, I found it interesting that Simonson chose to totally separate those in France and those 'back home' and not just for a single chapter. I found myself wondering why the others were doing, how they were coping. The style reminded me of Bronte.