The Last Night in London
By: Karen White
Published Year: 2021
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 480
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way shape or form influenced my opinion of this story.
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): A captivating story of friendship, love and betrayal – and finding hope in the darkness of war.
London, 1939. Beautiful and ambitious Eva Harlow and her American best friend, Precious Dubose, are trying to make their way as fashion models. When Eva falls in love with Graham St. John, an aristocrat and Royal Air Force pilot, she can’t believe her luck – she’s getting everything she ever wanted. Then the Blitz devastates her world, and Eva finds herself slipping into a web of intrigue, spies and secrets. As Eva struggles to protect everything she holds dear, all it takes is one unwary moment to change their lives forever.
London, 2019. American journalist Maddie Warner travels to London to interview Precious about her life in pre-WWII London. Maddie, healing from past trauma and careful to close herself off to others, finds herself drawn to both Precious and to Colin, Precious’ enigmatic surrogate nephew. As Maddie gets closer to her, she begins to unravel Precious’ haunting past – and the secrets she swore she’d never reveal
First Impressions
Ooohhhhh I love this cover! It’s so pretty! Between the purple and then the lights it was too pretty to turn down. The story also sounded intriguing. Add to the fact that I have enjoyed White’s other books and I knew I had to accept this one.
What I thought
I have tried to explain this book to two separate people and both times it has taken me way longer than I intended. So, instead of trying to give my ow brief summary like I usually do, I recommend reading the summary provided above.
There is a lot going on in this book. Not only does it alternate timelines by chapter, but there are multiple storylines for multiple characters. Maddie, who is the present day main character, is mostly working on a story interviewing Precious, but she also has her own demons to deal with. Eva, who is the past day main character starts as a love story but then ends up becoming a story of betrayal.
For some reason, even though I really enjoyed the story itself, I found it moved a bit slow for me. At no point did I ever want to quite reading the book, but I also never found myself getting sucked in or not being able to put the book down. Maybe it was the writing? I’m not sure.
White’s books also often have a bit of a twist to them which can be fun. It’s been a while since I read one of her books so I can’t remember if I figured out the previous twists, but this one I had everything figured out by about 40%. That could have also been the reason why this book took me a little bit of time to get through, since I found myself just wanting to know whether or not I was right.
A lot of the time when books alternate timelines, I do find myself drawn to one era over the other and that was the case for this book as well. I found myself more invested in Eva’s story occurring in 1939 than I was in Maddie’s story occurring in 2019.
The historical fiction part of this story was intriguing. I wanted to know what happened and I enjoyed all of the characters. The present day part of this story didn’t do too much for me other than confirm my hunch as to what the twists of the story would be. It’s not one of my favorites by White, but it was still a solid read that I enjoyed.