Sometimes when you're reading a historical fiction novel, perhaps especially one set during World War II and featuring characters doing extraordinary things (like being an SOE agent and a fighter pilot with a hidden identity), you have to suspend not disbelief, exactly, but adherence to the details of the actual historical events and times. This is important if you really want to read enjoy a story, in the case of Evie and Jack a story of romance against all odds.

After all, if it's strict and nuanced details of war you want, you should probably read non-fiction histories anyway.

So, with suspended judgment of facts skimmed over and/or twisted to fit the tale of Evie Devereux and Jack Cave, I did read and very much liked this novel by Glenn Haybittle. Yes, some things seemed awfully extra and extreme but never entirely outside the realm of possibility.

The most interesting part of this novel is that Evie and Jack spend very little time together during it. And the biggest accomplishment of the novel is that their being very far apart and yet still holding onto each, not so much out of true romance but more out of a need simply to have someone to anchor them in their darkest hours.

It isn't so much a romance as it is a story of two people enduring World War II and having what may not even have been a connection in another time and other place be strengthened by and because of the circumstances of what they were living. And that makes sense enough to forgive the few flaws in the story.

Disclaimer: Thanks to NetGalley and Cheyne Walk for the chance to read this book. All thoughts are my own, no compensation was given, and I apologize for the badly delayed review.

Historical fiction is my genre especially WWII. I was excited to read Evie and Jack from the blurb about a British undercover courier and an RAF pilot. I have tried to read this at three different times. There were a few interesting parts but for me, I found myself having to reread in places as it just did not flow. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 stars

I have to say that this book was not very good. It seemed too haphazard and waffled from one thought to another. I kept trying to give it a chance to tell me a story that I actually cared about, but it never did.

As a positive, though, I was impressed with how the fear of being a pilot for the RAF became real for me.

I know the author tried to give some background for the characters, but the information was not handled well and I never felt like I connected with any of them. That makes me sad because I had really looked forward to reading this book.

Thank you to Net Galley for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

This is story set in World War 2 and is told in 2 parts . Evie is a spy and is parachuted into France. Jack is a spitfire bomber, his job is to protect the coast of Britain and to destroy German enemy aircraft. This part of the story is very descriptive and takes the reader into the true terror and courage of those pilots whose job was to protect Britain .

Overall I enjoyed this book there was humour,love courage and despair.

I really enjoyed this book. It had lots of interesting side stories and the love story of Evie and Jack made me smile. If you love historical fiction, I highly suggest you read this book.

Thank you to Netgalley for giving me the chance to read and review, "Evie and Jack"
by Glenn Haybittle. I really love historical fiction so I was very excited to read this one. Upon reading it, I was very confused right from the start. I kept re-reading, hoping to understand what was going on. I decided to keep reading to see if things would become more clear. Honestly, I just couldn't get into it. This may be the perfect book for someone else but it just was not for me.

Thank you to the publisher, the author and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my candid review.

I love to read books about WWII. I read a lot of books about WWII. And this is one of the best books about the war that I have read. Why?

Because it reflects the real horror and fears and uncertainty and gruesomeness of war. The book takes place in an RAF base where pilots were sent up into the air to defend England from the Nazi bombers. THey were frequently facing odds of 10 or 15 to one. And they were sent up 2 or 3 times per day. And they were afraid. And the losses were horrifying. So men and women had abbreviated love affairs since they never knew if they were going to alive the next day.

It also tells the story of the brave men and women who infiltrated Nazi -occupied France under huge stress and having to trust their lives to people that they were ever fully confident would not turn them into the Nazis.

It is a great story of love and war. And you should read it.

I would rate it 6 stars, if I could

This book reminded me of the Code Name Verity series so I went into it with one mindset but after I began I had a difficult time getting into the way the tense and narration was set up. After I got used to it I began to enjoy the book more.

I wish a bit more of it could have been fleshed out, sometimes the narration and jumping between time frames was confusing, especially towards the end with Evie---I thought the 1944 scenes with her were later in 1944 or closer to 1945 but we see that isn't the case later. That threw me off because it wasn't clear.

Overall I enjoyed the read!

Thank you to Glenn Haybittle and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review an ARC of Evie and Jack. I thought that this book was interesting, but in all honesty, it wasn't my cup of tea and didn't hold my attention. For that reason, I'll be giving it 3 stars.

This is yet another tale of love in the time of war. Jack is a young fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain and Evie a plucky young woman who works in radio communications for the squadron when launched against assaults by German bombers and fighters. We start from a later point when Evie parachutes into occupied France to work as liaison to the Resistance. I appreciated the notching down of the melodrama, with restraint in both the romance between our main characters and in the achievements of their heroic actions, adding to a sense of realism. These are not quite the average engaged citizens stepping up to do their part against Hitler, as Furst likes to employ in his tales. Their actions are at the extreme of what we imagine for courage and sacrifice, yet their mentality as they go about their dangerous work in often matter-of-fact. Somehow able to rise above the abject terrors, rage, and insanity that other writers emphasize. I am not sure I believe the implication that love makes such resilience possible.

Evie and Jack’s courtship makes for a personal way to stand up for humane concerns in the face of the madness of war and persistent dangers of him getting shot down or her dying in the periodic bombings of the airfield. After they begin to fall in love (both virgins), she suddenly abandons ship and pursues dates with others. There is some hint she objects a lot to Jack’s enlisting under a false name, which is a longstanding puzzle in the tale. As the book opens, we experience her prepping for how to handle a Gestapo interrogation and then rehearsing the details of her assigned French identity before a night drop by parachute to work a liaison with the French Resistance. Her thoughts dwell on Jack, presumed dead after failing to return from a sortie. She finds herself adapting her story for her role as “Monique” to realities in her own life:
"I betrayed my husband for another man. …Why did I betray him like that?. … Because he was going to die. Every time he was up in the air I expected him not to come back. I went through a torture of apprehension every day. I wanted not to care about him anymore."

The unfolding story covers how Evie came to this courageous role and struggles with the dangers of betrayal and capture as she does her job in France. On his side, we follow the rollercoaster of their aborted romance in parallel to his growing success in the near-daily air battles, while day after day losing more and more of his bosom buddies. I found myself happy to dwell in their minds as rendered by Haybittle, amazed at their healthy capacity to surmount debilitating emotions such as feelings of helplessness or the opposite of turning into robots of death. For example, here we see Jack emphasizing with a German pilot who ejected from his plane and caught briefly on his wing:
"For a moment he and the German hanging beneath his wing exchange eye contact. He is just a boy of about nineteen, twenty. He has never seen anyone look so terrified in his life. ...
As far as his feeling is concerned the boy has somehow become his friend. He wants him to survive. …But he is annoyed with the boy too. He has stolen some of his aggression. Infected him with his fear."

<img src="https://postalheritage.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/the-battle-of-britain-c2a31-33-stamp-2015-pilots-of-32-squadron-await-orders.jpg" width="400" height="294"/>

As a second example of mind over madness, here are Evie’s thoughts just before a night jump from a plane over a clandestine site in France:
"She turns to face the ladder. For a moment she is lifted outsider herself, a voyeur of her own experience. It’s like she is saying farewell to Evie. Leaving behind everything meaningful she as Evie has created in conjunction with the world that has in turn created her. Images of that world flash before her … For a moment it’s as if she is breathing on a moonlit window, writing her name on a circle of mist and then watching it slowly disappear.
She thinks of the mysterious people down there who will soon become part of her daily life, how at the moment they are no more than shadows outside the frame of a mirror."

All in all, I found this novel leaned a bit too far in making the war a backdrop to the romance of Evie and Jack, in a sense sanitizing their experience. Somewhat more than in Haybittle’s previous novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1372211676">The Way Back to Florence</a>, which featured a more nuanced relationship between an artist and a downed American pilot in WW2 Italy. But not nearly so much as in Hannah’s “The Nightingale.” As in “Dr. Zhivago” I wanted to believe that the characters could prove a counter to the claim of Pasha that in war (in Russia) “the personal life is dead.” Thus, by rating is about 3.5, or a B+.

This book was provided for review by the publisher through the Netgalley program.

I had a bit of a tough time getting into this book at first; I'm a bit fussy about writing style and the changes back and forth between points of view was a bit confusing, given that the main characters had more than one name! But Evie and Jack is worth a read, especially if you like WWII historical fiction.

Evie is a WAAF wireless operator and Jack is a Spitfire pilot when they meet. It's the beginning of Germany's nightly assault on England, and Evie's voice is one of those that Jack hears as he is hopelessly outnumbered and outguns by German pilots escorting the hundreds of bombers with their deadly loads they plan to drop on England. In an attempt to escape is father's past, Jack takes on a different name before he meets Evie, who only knows him as Guy. Soon Evie too has a new name, as she joins the SOE and becomes an agent in Nazi occupied France.

The story goes back and forth between the two as their relationship starts, then develops, then is ripped apart by the vicissitudes of war. Even though it wasn't my favorite writing style, I couldn't put the book down; I just had to know what happened next, to both Jack and to Evie. Their characters were so real, their stories so compelling, I couldn't let it go.

There is lots of WWII historical fiction out there, but Evie and Jack stands with the likes of "All The Light You Cannot See" and "The Nightingale". Definitely a good read!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Net Galley. I had difficulty reading this book. It seemed very disjointed and jumped quickly between scenes. Not my favorite.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Evie and Jack is the story of an RAF pilot and a British courier undercover with the SOE. They fall in love during the last tumultuous years of World War II, each experiencing unimaginable horrors that changes the course of their lives. Somewhere within these horrors, their love and memories of one another brings them together again. The story of Evie and Jack will stay with you long after the last page is read.

Glenn Haybittle has given a exceptional literary performance in his novel "Evie and Jack". Not having an extensive repertoire, there is nothing amateur about this author. He writes as a seasoned veteran. Haybittle has the ability to draw the reader into the experiences of his characters, and his imagery is superb. I could practically feel the controls of the Spitfire within my hands, the excitement, exhilaration and at times fear of flying through the air as enemy fighters are on my tail, could be felt through the authors words on the page.
I could feel the trepidation as Evie walks through the streets of occupied Paris, wondering who may be following, who to trust, and how much time before the inevitable capture by the enemy as they seem to get closer and closer.
At times the author is a bit crass but if one can get past that, you will find this amazing piece a literature that is beautifully written , that will captivate and leave you wanting more from this author.

I have posted reviews on both Goodreads and Amazon.

This is the third book I've read by Ms. Gable and while I enjoyed the other two, this one didn't do it for me. I'm probably in the minority here, yet somehow this novel doesn't actually fall into historical but more in the gossipy "chic lit" category.

My thanks to NetGalley for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sorry to say I could not finish this book which is very very rare for me. Did not feel connected to the characters and thought the parts I did read were confusing.

Loved parts of this book - the scenarios from the Spitfire were so thrilling, the prison scenarios were also interesting. I felt, as a whole, that the book seemed disjointed. I found myself rereading to try to fill in the connections between scenes or chapters. Although Evie and Jack seemed real their relationship did not. My thanks to Glenn Haybittle, Cheyne Walk, and NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC, soon to be published on June 18th.

Evie and Jack is an entertaining historical novel, taking place in England and France during WWII. Jack is a British pilot working under an assumed name and Evie has various jobs throughout the course of the war under several nam de plumes. This is an excellent novel, presenting the realities of the war without losing the pace and drama of the story, or the sense of humanity that drives the characters.

I think you will love Evie and Jack, under whatever name they are hiding. This is a tale with personable characters and flowing descriptive passages of English countryside and French farming counties, and the flying segments are pure poetry. Glenn Haybittle is an author I will follow.

I received a free electronic copy of this historical novel from Netgalley, Glenn Haybittle, and Cheyne Walk in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

I must admit I almost put the book down which is something I rarely do with historical fiction. The narrator changes and in the beginning especially the way it changed just felt off to me. The pace is also a bit off throughout the book.
It is strange to think about all that was put on the line for WWII and how the repercussions of WWI were still being played out, not just globally but individual struggles.
I just wish the flow had been better as Evie and Jack were great characters who were well developed and thought out but the flow through off really connecting with them.

Reading Evie and Jack felt as if I was on a roller coaster. Ascending up the track was slow but anticipatory and then, after reaching the pinnacle, the downward ride was swift and menacing. I found the book disjointed at times and I had to go back to peruse what I may have missed. Perhaps the final draft could have more continuity between chapters. The characters were well defined. The descripti0ns of life in war torn England and France, vivid. I liked the book even though it took me time to become invested in it. Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This is a history fiction. Evite is an undercover agent and Jack is a pilot. They meet during the war and start a romance. There is so much deception that the characters don't know whim they can trust. identities change and changing into the identity can be challenging.
This is a remarkable book. They characters are finely tuned to each other. The storyline is believable and entertaining.
5 Stars