Book ~ "Our Darkest Night" (2021) Jennifer Robson

From Goodreads ~ It is the autumn of 1943 and life is becoming increasingly perilous for Italian Jews like the Mazin family. With Nazi Germany now occupying most of her beloved homeland and the threat of imprisonment and deportation growing ever more certain, Antonina Mazin has but one hope to survive - to leave Venice and her beloved parents and hide in the countryside with a man she has only just met.

Nico Gerardi was studying for the priesthood until circumstances forced him to leave the seminary to run his family’s farm. A moral and just man, he could not stand by when the fascists and Nazis began taking innocent lives. Rather than risk a perilous escape across the mountains, Nina will pose as his new bride. And to keep her safe and protect secrets of his own, Nico and Nina must convince prying eyes they are happily married and in love.

But farm life is not easy for a cultured city girl who dreams of becoming a doctor like her father, and Nico’s provincial neighbors are wary of this soft and educated woman they do not know. Even worse, their distrust is shared by a local Nazi official with a vendetta against Nico. The more he learns of Nina, the more his suspicions grow - and with them his determination to exact revenge.

As Nina and Nico come to know each other, their feelings deepen, transforming their relationship into much more than a charade. Yet both fear that every passing day brings them closer to being torn apart.

It's autumn 1943 and Antonina is a Jew living in Italy with her father (her mother is ill and in a nearby rest home).  To protect Antonina, her father arranges with his friend, who is a priest, to have Antonina live with a Catholic family on a farm and pretend to be the Catholic wife of Nico, one of the sons, until the war is over.  She doesn't want to go but her father convinces her it is the only way she can stay safe.  

Nico has been helping Jews escape the country and carries on with this mission once Antonina (now called Nina) moves in with him and his family.  As Nina settles in to farm life, she and Nico become friends and eventually fall in love.  A former schoolmate of Nico's is now a Nazi official and suspects something is up and is determine to find out what it is.

I thought this book was okay.  It is written in third person perspective in Nina's voice.  The story started off interestingly enough with Nina giving up her life in the city to move to the country and pretend to be Nico's wife.  But then it took a dark turn suddenly.  While I had to applaud Nico's dedication to wanting to save lives, I would have thought that he would have given it up once he fell in love in Nina.  Plus his actions put his family in danger and I can't imagine having his family terrorized and beaten was worth it.

Book ~ "The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding" (2018) Jennifer Robson

From Goodreads ~ London, 1947: Besieged by the harshest winter in living memory, burdened by onerous shortages and rationing, the people of postwar Britain are enduring lives of quiet desperation despite their nation’s recent victory. Among them are Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers at the famed Mayfair fashion house of Norman Hartnell. Together they forge an unlikely friendship but their nascent hopes for a brighter future are tested when they are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime honor: taking part in the creation of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown.

Toronto, 2016: More than half a century later, Heather Mackenzie seeks to unravel the mystery of a set of embroidered flowers, a legacy from her late grandmother. How did her beloved Nan, a woman who never spoke of her old life in Britain, come to possess the priceless embroideries that so closely resemble the motifs on the stunning gown worn by Queen Elizabeth II at her wedding almost seventy years before? And what was her Nan’s connection to the celebrated textile artist and holocaust survivor Miriam Dassin?

With "The Gown", Jennifer Robson takes us inside the workrooms where one of the most famous wedding gowns in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes details with a sweeping portrait of a society left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces readers to three unforgettable heroines, their points of view alternating and intersecting throughout its pages, whose lives are woven together by the pain of survival, the bonds of friendship, and the redemptive power of love. 

In London in the winter of 1947, the war is over but residents are still rationing and goods are scarce.  Ann has been working as an embroiderer at the fashion house of Norman Hartnell.  She is sharing a council house with her sister-in-law, Milly.  Miriam is from France and lost her family in the holocaust.  Looking for a new start, she moves to London and gets a job as an embroiderer, working with Ann.  When Milly moves to Canada to be with family, Miriam becomes her roommate.

Norman Hartnell is the official dressmaker to the Royal Family and it's quite exciting when he is assigned the task of designing and creating Princess Elizabeth's wedding dress along with her bridesmaids.  As senior embroiderers, Ann and Miriam are part of the project.  Everyone wants to know the details of the dresses and the employees of Norman Hartnell are soon being hounded by reporters.

Seventy years later in Toronto, Heather's grandmother, Ann, passes away.  As they are going through her things, a box has Heather's name on it and inside is a sample for Princess Elizabeth's wedding gown.  That's when they realize that Ann must have worked on the dress, which is a surprise to them.  Heather travels to London to see what she can learn about her grandmother's past.

Though it is about the making of Princess Elizabeth's wedding dress, the real story in this book is Ann and Miriam and their lives.  The book is written in third person perspective with a focus on Ann, Miriam and Heather (their chapters are labeled with their names).  As a head's up, there is a violent scene towards the end.

There was an interesting mix of fictional characters (like Ann and Miriam) and real people (like Norman Hartnell and Christian Dior) interacting with each other.  And it was interesting to read about what life was like in the late 1940s after the war as London tried to recover.

I found it odd that Heather and her mother (Ann's only child) knew nothing about Ann's past before she moved to Canada.  And the mother mentions a couple times that she never thought to ask.  Really?!  I also thought it was strange that as close as Ann and Miriam were (not just colleagues but also friends and roommates) that they didn't keep in touch when Ann moved to Canada.  Milly was able to send Ann packages but Ann and Miriam couldn't send each other letters?

Book ~ "Goodnight from London" (2017) Jennifer Robson

From Goodreads ~ In the summer of 1940, ambitious young American journalist Ruby Sutton gets her big break: the chance to report on the European war as a staff writer for Picture Weekly newsmagazine in London. She jumps at the chance, for it's an opportunity not only to prove herself, but also to start fresh in a city and country that know nothing of her humble origins. But life in besieged Britain tests Ruby in ways she never imagined.

Although most of Ruby's new colleagues welcome her, a few resent her presence, not only as an American but also as a woman. She is just beginning to find her feet, to feel at home in a country that is so familiar yet so foreign, when the bombs begin to fall.

As the nightly horror of the Blitz stretches unbroken into weeks and months, Ruby must set aside her determination to remain an objective observer. When she loses everything but her life and must depend upon the kindness of strangers, she learns for the first time the depth and measure of true friendship - and what it is to love a man who is burdened by secrets that aren’t his to share.

Goodnight from London, inspired in part by the wartime experiences of the author’s own grandmother, is a captivating, heartfelt, and historically immersive story that readers are sure to embrace.

Ruby is a young woman living in New York in the early 1940s.  She's working as a writer for a newspaper and moves to London to work on a newsmagazine, quite an opportunity given the times.  This is during World War II when London is getting bombed on a regular basis, residents must carry around gas masks and nights are spent in bomb shelters.   Working as a writer, Ruby gets to see first hand the horrors of the war.

Ruby meets and falls for Bennett, a friend of her boss.  He is a soldier who tends to disappear and pop back into her life often.  When her boarding house is destroyed, Bennett moves her in to live with his godmother.

The premise of this story sounded interesting, especially because it was inspired by the author's own grandmother.  I thought the accounts of the war was interesting, reading about the destruction of London and England during World War II.  I found the writing and the characters rather bland, though, and it got worse as I progressed into the book.  I couldn't get into any of the characters and found them boring.  I got a little past halfway and I finally gave up.  I skipped ahead to the last chapter to see whether Ruby and Bennett finally got together in the end.  This author's writing style just wasn't for me, I guess.  That's too bad because I really wanted to like it because it was an interesting story to tell.