Chloe has broken her engagement and fled to France. Her parents have asked her to meet with a man creating a documentary and wants to interview her about the family's castle. Her grandmother seems to be lost in the past and begs Chloe to find out what happened to Adeline. The secrets she's about to uncover will turn her world upside down.
Chloe's grandmother, Gisele, is the other main character. During the occupation of France, the Germans take over her family home, and Gisele fights back the only way she knows how. She stays to protect the child of a friend who was taken, and her brother, who is part of the resistance.
The past gets woven into the present when Chloe tries to talk to one of her grandmother's old friends. She knows the older woman has some of the answers she's unable to get from her grandmother, but the woman seems unwilling to talk to Chloe. There's also more to the man making the documentary than she first thinks, and she's forced to look at things a different way.
While I liked this book, I didn't like the way it dealt with the different stories. Every chapter you get torn out of the story you're in and plunged into the other story line. I personally am not a fan of this type of back and forth writing, because I feel like it disrupts the flow of the story. If I put aside that personal preference, I did like the story. I think the ending was well done, and I applaud the author for doing her homework.
I'm overall torn about how I feel about this one. I liked the individual stories, but with the way they were presented, I found myself annoyed with each switch. If I'd known it was one of the books that did the back and forth past/present, I doubt I would have picked it up. I'll just put it this way: if you don't mind getting jarred out of the story every chapter, this is a good book. For me, it ends up just being decent.
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