Customer Reviews

Perfidia

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Historical romances outside the usual Regency England are hard to come by, so when I saw this book on shelves(after reading the review in Romantic Times), I snapped it up. Elspeth McKendrick has written two other historicals set in the 20th century, with her last release, the equally suspenseful "Blood Moon Over Britain" set during WWII as well.

In Perfidia, Sophie de Havilland flees England with a broken heart to find refuge with her aunt, married to a German baron. However, 1939 Berlin is not the place for an enemy of the Nazi Party to reside, as Sophie soon discovers after the rose-tinted glass she wore concerning the Third Reich are quickly stripped from her eyes. In the meantime, she finds herself attracted to a half-American SS officer whose loyalties to the Reich are a bit murkier than her own. McKendrick successfully delivers a series of heart-stopping twists and conveys the period as if she'd lived through the times herself. While the romance between Sophie and Karl take a backseat to the suspense, "Perfidia" is ultimately satisfying and I look forward to more novels from McKendrick.

This is a great thriller that vividly portrays life in Germany at the dawn of WWII. It's not a typical setting for a romance novel, but it works very well.

In 1939 Sophie de Havilland left London to leave her past behind her. She traveled to Berlin, Germany to live with her aunt. However, she is amazed as to how far Hitler and the Third Reich rebuilt a country that was reeling from the Great War and subsequent peace and world Depression.

She enjoys the night life especially the cabarets in swinging Berlin with the handsome SS officers, but also hears stories of atrocities by inhumane people. Her aunt had warned her to go back to England but Sophie failed to heed what she now believes is sage advice. She begins to think of the Nazis as murderous demons especially these out of the world SS hunks that Himmler ordered to procreate with Aryan females; she had once desired these perfect male specimens. Desperate she turns to a blue eyed half-American for help in escaping the murderous treacherous regime, but begins to have doubts about he is who he claims to be as she considers he may be undercover Gestapo seeking to find doubters.

PERFIDIA is an entertaining WWII romantic suspense that grips the audience from the moment the Nazis invade Poland and never lets up until the final attempt to escape the violent regime. The story line is fast-paced as Sophie lands in one mess after another while too easily rescuing friends from the invincible all mighty Gestapo, who are every where, yet unable to deal with an inexperienced young female. Still historical romance fans will enjoy this vivid strong look from inside the Third Reich as seen mostly through the eyes of a former admirer who observing first hand the atrocities becomes an enemy of the state.

Harriet Klausner

Reading this book is just an exercise in frustration. It has a really interesting premise and a storyline that could have been involving. Could have been- if it didn't have such shoddy execution and feature such amateurish writing. I also wondered how much research the author actually did for this book. In the book, the SS officers referred to themselves as Nazis and the Nazi party several times, which would not have have happened. The women also kept on referring to themselves as Aryan, which also seems kinda iffy to me. And would a British woman really have been as well received and moved in the highest levels of society as the heroine Sophie did if Germany was at war with Britain just because she's got blonde hair and blue eyes?

And then there's the heroine, Sophie, whose believe in the Third Reich at the beginning just made her seem like such an idiot. How could she not have known what was happening in the concentration camps? Did she live in a cave? Her eventual transformation from believing in the Third Reich to hating them also had a ring of falseness to it, as she didn't feel that strongly about what was happening to the Jews one way or another until an incident that happened impacted her personally. I didn't believe for a second that she didn't know, it felt like she just didn't care until it hit her on the homefront.

Historical fictions set during WWI are hard to come by, which only made this book all the more disappointing.