An interesting story of the Dutch Resistance against the Nazis and the price people can pay to fight for their country against enemy occupation,

When the Germans invade the Netherlands, Leiden University student Hetty’s boyfriend goes missing. But she has little time to grieve when she volunteers as a courier for the Dutch resistance, joined by her roommate, the beautiful Mimi, and seventeen-year-old Maria, the daughter of a slain resistance fighter. At great personal risk, the three women carry documents, secret messages, and cash to protect Jews, downed pilots, and others hiding from the Nazis.

Great book! Very well written, I loved the characters, felt like I was right there with them! Thank you netgalley for this arc!

Kudos to the author for honoring his mother-in-law with this novel based on her real life story of working for the Dutch resistance during WWII. There's so many WWII books out there but the Dutch perspective seems to be underrepresented in popular novels, so it was nice to read a novel from this point of view.

As much as it was interesting subject matter I had a few issues with the structure of the novel itself. The book felt more like connected vignettes centered around the main character, without a cohesive plot. There was limited character development which left most people in the book feeling a bit one-dimensional. The dialogue between characters felt a bit stilted. It was also hard to keep track of the timeline of the story. It would have been really helpful to have the month and year at the beginning of each new vignette as it was often unclear how much time has gone by (days, months, years?).

With that said, this fictionalized novel based on real stories serves as an important testament to the real life Hetty who bravely served the resistance. I was compelled to keep reading to find out how it all ended — the ups and downs (there were many!), and how she survived and lived to tell the tale.

this was such a great historical novel, I thought it worked well as a World War 2 story and it was done respectfully. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and thought it worked well with the time-period. Robert Loewen does a beautiful tribute to his mother-in-law.