This was an intriguing story about WW II and women in the battle - not on the battlefield, but how they helped in other ways. I don't normally fully enjoy war books but this one was well told, well written and really compelling. The addition to the story was the girl that starts at the medic station and the mystery that surrounds her. Also the male soldier that has a different side to the story. I really liked this one. ( )

WW2 was heartbreaking enough. And the story of women correspondents was powerful enough. It was unnecessary to add layers of the communication trope compounded like Draw 4 cards in a diabolical game of UNO. Soooooo much of the last 25% was avoidable if characters didn’t over complicate things after the author threw the weirdest curveball to put them in that strange position. Thus, setting the rest of it in motion. ( )

The main character is strongly based upon the real life historical character Lee Miller, a pioneer female photojournalist who went from a model in Vogue to telling the human toll story of WWII. Jessica May is the books Lee Miller, like Miller went from model to WWII photojournalist. She had to overcome being a woman at a time of profound chauvinism. The book intertwines a love story between Jess May, Lt. Colonel Hallworth and a young orphan Victorina. The 3 lives becomes intertwined and torn apart, but yet through decades of separation still remain attached unbeknownst to most of them. It's the war journal that really is the best part of the book and this was further strengthen when reading the epilogue to learn that Jess May was strongly based off the real character Lee Miller, though Ms Lester clearly says it is not Miller's biography. Still so much of her research went into Miller and she gave Jess May many of Miller's photograph credits within the book. ( )

I feel like I need a millennium to recover from this book, but then I’d never get a review out. Holy lord almighty this book hit me hard with emotions and feelings like no book has before. I am SERIOUSLY not kidding. This book was so well written, and the story takes you on one of those really enjoyable roller coasters that has A BUNCH of twists, turns and flips. I was not expecting a lot going into this - partially because of how I felt about Anne Rice’s The Mummy and Margaret George’s The Confessions of Young Nero. This book is heart wrenching like no other that I’ve read. I actually TEARED UP at the end. ( )

After her French photographer boyfriend sabotages her modeling career, Vogue offers to continue employing Jessica May as a war correspondent. Jess has learned quite a bit of the tools of the trade from Emile and she has tinkered with writing enough to know that she can turn out the kind of woman-focused stories from Italy and France that Vogue's readers will want. But things at the Front aren't as Jess imagined, she and the other female reporters must fight their own battles just to cover the war. Jess wins a few and loses a few - some fights being more personal than others, some having consequences that reach down generations.

Lester has said that she based the character of Jess May on real-life Lee Miller and that's apparent in several areas of the book. The first 100 pages really swept me away. Then the narrative did what I have really come to dislike in these types of tales - it split from WWII to present day. I really, really liked the WWII sections. Jess May and Martha Gellhorn (Mrs Hemingway, at the time) hunting down gut-wrenching stories, the collateral damage inflicted on everyone, Jess's compassion for the soldiers and ensuing romance was beautifully written - those passages were just the best. I cannot say the same for the modern tale at all and the last 50 pages I just disengaged entirely. Such a pity. ( )