Changes

Author A L Hlad brings this aspect of wartime intrigue to life with careful passion - he's clearly very keen to explore this aspect of history, and it certainly seems that he's done his research, with historical details enabling an uncanny sense of setting - yet never proving too clunky when it comes to moving the plot along. There are a lot of WWII novels out there – but Hlad's subject matter is so interesting that this really stood out for me in what is a rather saturated market. In fact, part of me wishes we could have had more detail – particularly on the fascinating National Pigeon Service. The love story between Ollie and Susan feels rather inevitable, but they are well written as characters – whilst they're not necessarily memorable, their meeting is a wonderfully dramatic segment of the book, and the situations they're placed in allow for the emotions between them to feel both real and extremely powerful. As the stakes become ever higher, Hlad isn't afraid of adding a few plot twists in here and there – and there's a time jump towards the end of the book which jarred with me slightly – but I think only because I'd become truly invested in events occurring in the 1940s.

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