Code Name Sapphire by Pam Jenoff

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: A woman must rescue her cousin's family from a train bound for Auschwitz in this riveting tale of bravery and resistance, from the bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris

1942. Hannah Martel has narrowly escaped Nazi Germany after her fiancé was killed in a pogrom. When her ship bound for America is turned away at port, she has nowhere to go but to her cousin Lily, who lives with her family in Brussels. Fearful for her life, Hannah is desperate to get out of occupied Europe. But with no safe way to leave, she must return to the dangerous underground work she thought she had left behind.

Seeking help, Hannah joins the Sapphire Line, a secret resistance network led by a mysterious woman named Micheline and her enigmatic brother Matteo. But when a grave mistake causes Lily’s family to be arrested and slated for deportation to Auschwitz, Hannah finds herself torn between her loyalties. How much is Hannah willing to sacrifice to save the people she loves? Inspired by incredible true stories of courage and sacrifice, Code Name Sapphire is a powerful novel about love, family and the unshakable resilience of women in even the hardest of times.

HerKentucky review: The body of fiction about female spies in World War II that has popped up over the past few years seems overwhelming and exhaustive.  I often feel like I’ve read them all, and sometimes start to wonder whether there are any new stories to be told in the genre. However, Pam Jenoff — an author, law professor and former diplomat — consistently delivers smart, complex and compelling stories. Ms. Jenoff’s latest novel, Code Name Sapphire is a fast-paced tale of love and espionage in occupied Belgium.

Jenoff interweaves the story of Jewish cousins Lily and Hannah with that of Micheline and Matteo, siblings who front a resistance network. The novel is fast-paced, heartbreaking, and filled with the reminder that many Europeans were faced with unthinkable choices during the Nazi era. Ms. Jenoff loosely based the novel on a real-life mission to liberate a train bearing prisoners bound for Auschwitz.

As two love triangles unfold alongside betrayals and a complex rescue mission, the narrative becomes a little convoluted. I feel like this book needed one more rewrite to tighten the plot and explore the characters. It’s a well-researched historical novel that captures the heartbreak and resignation of prisoners headed toward certain death. Ms. Jenoff paints a compelling portrait of the character Lily in her journey from sheltered housewife to defiant prisoner. I wish the other characters had felt as multidimensional and realistic.

This is a good read for those of us who love the WWII historical novel, particularly the subgenre of female spy networks. I’d skip it if you’re only mildly interested in these works.

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Please note that I received an Advanced Review Copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review of this work. This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: Daisy Shoemaker can’t sleep. With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, she should be content. But her teenage daughter can be a handful, her husband can be distant, her work can feel trivial, and she has lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. Still, Daisy knows she’s got it good. So why is she up all night?

While Daisy tries to identify the root of her dissatisfaction, she’s also receiving misdirected emails meant for a woman named Diana Starling, whose email address is just one punctuation mark away from her own. While Daisy’s driving carpools, Diana is chairing meetings. While Daisy’s making dinner, Diana’s making plans to reorganize corporations. Diana’s glamorous, sophisticated, single-lady life is miles away from Daisy’s simpler existence. When an apology leads to an invitation, the two women meet and become friends. But, as they get closer, we learn that their connection was not completely accidental. Who IS this other woman, and what does she want with Daisy?

From the manicured Main Line of Philadelphia to the wild landscape of the Outer Cape, written with Jennifer Weiner’s signature wit and sharp observations, That Summer is a story about surviving our pasts, confronting our futures, and the sustaining bonds of friendship.

HerKentucky review: (Content warning: This book includes themes of rape, assault, and trauma and could trigger some readers.)

I honestly can’t remember a time in my adult reading life that I didn't love Jennifer Weiner’s novels. I read her debut novel, Good in Bed, nearly twenty years ago and was immediately hooked on her compelling writing style. Ms. Weiner writes smart, witty female protagonists better than anyone. (Fun Fact: Ms. Weiner briefly wrote a pop culture column for the Lexington Herald-Leader!) Of course, I picked up her latest novel, That Summer, on its publication date, knowing little more than that it took place in part on Cape Cod, with a callback to last year’s fun, fast-paced Big Summer. It’s a Jennifer Weiner beach novel, I thought, it’ll be fun and lightweight. Instead, I found myself devouring a story that’s part Lifetime movie, part Promising Young Woman, and part Christine Blasey Ford’s Congressional testimony.

That Summer is a smart, well-written story — one I couldn’t put down — but it’s far from a lightweight beach book. Ms. Weiner intertwines the stories of two women named Diana — one a corporate consultant, the other an anxiety-ridden housewife on Philadelphia’s Main Line — who forge a friendship seemingly based on their very similar email addresses and the misdirected messages that each woman receives. The ensuing story is a complex #METOO era tale of sexual assault, culpability, privilege, and the aftermath of trauma. Ms. Weiner explores ethical implications and psychological impact with skill and clarity, while making (most of) her characters imminently likable and relatable. The work manages to be funny and sweet at times, while presenting a complex story of revenge. It isn’t quite the breezy beach thriller I’d expected; in fact, it’s far better.

As a longtime fan of Ms. Weiner’s work, I find that one of her greatest storytelling strengths lies in the quirky details with which she imbues her characters. That Summer delivers odd, likable characters in droves — a prairie-core teenager who skips class at her swanky private school to make and sell crafts on Etsy, a banker-turned-Cape-Cod-restaurant-owner, and a teacher with an almost compulsive need to save all the children. These so-odd-they-have-to-be-real characters add a goodnatured twist to a story that ventures at times into dark territory.

That Summer is a must-read for my fellow Jennifer Weiner fans and for anyone who enjoys plot twists, quirky characters, or smartly-written depictions of tricky relationships.

Purchase That Summer on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.

Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? by Robert Lawson

HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: On October 26, 1961, after an evening of studying with friends on the campus of Transylvania University, nineteen-year-old student Betty Gail Brown got into her car around midnight―presumably headed for home. But she would never arrive. Three hours later, Brown was found dead in a driveway near the center of campus, strangled to death with her own brassiere. Kentuckians from across the state became engrossed in the proceedings as lead after lead went nowhere. Four years later, the police investigation completely stalled.

In 1965, a drifter named Alex Arnold Jr. confessed to the killing while in jail on other charges in Oregon. Arnold was brought to Lexington, indicted for the murder of Betty Gail Brown, and put on trial, where he entered a plea of not guilty. Robert G. Lawson was a young attorney at a local firm when a senior member asked him to help defend Arnold, and he offers a meticulous record of the case in Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? During the trial, the courtroom was packed daily, but witnesses failed to produce any concrete evidence. Arnold was an alcoholic whose memory was unreliable, and his confused, inconsistent answers to questions about the night of the homicide did not add up.

Since the trial, new leads have come and gone, but Betty Gail Brown's murder remains unsolved. A written transcript of the court proceedings does not exist; and thus Lawson, drawing upon police and court records, newspaper articles, personal files, and his own notes, provides an invaluable record of one of Kentucky's most famous cold cases.

HerKentucky review: Betty Gail Brown was a Lexington native, a Transylvania University student, and a member of the Delta Theta Chapter of Phi Mu. She was on campus late one Thursday night in October studying for a biology exam; the following morning, she was found dead in her car. Intense media coverage, a thorough police investigation, and a prolonged trial ensued. In Who Killed Betty Gail Brown?, Mr. Lawson, longtime criminal law professor at UK College of Law, recreates the crime, the investigation, and the legal proceedings from his perspective as the defense attorney for the accused killer, an alcoholic drifter named Alex Arnold.

I was immediately drawn to this story because I love any story about Lexington's past, and I loved my years as a Phi Mu in the Transy chapter. Of course, I needed to read about what happened to my sorority sister! 

The book is extremely respectful of Miss Brown, and takes pains to explain why the author and his law partner were committed to the belief that Mr. Arnold was, in all likelihood, not the killer. Professor Lawson's most-read work is Kentucky's Penal Code, and I will say that the story is, at times, very lawyerly and dry. There is no sensationalism in the work -- in fact, there are times when more details would have aided the story -- and the book often reads like the recitation of facts in a legal brief. It's an interesting exercise for a reader: I find myself coming to the story with an interest in Lexington history, and the victim's school and sorority, while the author is interested in finding answers to an unsolved crime and legal proceedings that ended in mistrial. It's an interesting exercise in perspective. For example, I found in follow-up research that the victim was a niece to the late Kentucky-born actor Harry Dean Stanton. I found this detail fascinating; of course it was omitted from the narrative of the book because it had nothing to do with the story.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes stories true crime, legal nonfiction, or Lexington history. If you're familiar with Transylvania's campus, it's eerie to think that this terrible crime took place in an area where you've walked so many times. Professor Lawson tells a great story from the perspective of his own involvement in the story, and his own uncertainty about who actually killed Miss Brown.

Order Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? from Amazon or Bookshop.org.

This review contains affiliate links; I will receive a small commission for purchases made through the links in this post. This commission does not impact the purchase price of the item.