Opinions of a Wolf

Summary:
A train journey into the past. A love that echoes through time….

Paddington Station, present day:
A young woman boards the sleeper train to Cornwall with only a beautiful emerald silk evening dress and an old, well-read diary full of sketches. Ellie Nightingale is a shy violinist who plays like her heart is broken. But when she meets fellow passenger Joe she feels like she has been given that rarest of gifts…a second chance.

Paddington Station, 1944:
Beneath the shadow of the war which rages across Europe, Alex and Eliza meet by chance. She is a gutsy painter desperate to get to the frontline as a war artist and he is a wounded RAF pilot now commissioned as a war correspondent. With time slipping away they make only one promise: to meet in Berlin when this is all over. But this is a time when promises are hard to keep, and hope is all you can hold in your heart.

Review:
This book tells two love stories by alternating between the two different timelines – present day and 1944. It strongly hints that present day Ellie and Joe are reincarnations of 1944 Eliza and Alex.

I liked both storylines for the majority of the book, although the 1944 appealed more to me. It had more action and covered a larger period of time. The present day storyline is basically just the day of the night party train and the day immediately after. Because so much more was happening in 1944 with such greater risk to Eliza and Alex, I found myself wanting to skip over the present day to go to the past. Plus, the present day takes on greater meaning the more you get to know Eliza and Alex. For this reason, I think it would have been better to have completely told Eliza and Alex’s story and then end the book with an epilogue short version of Ellie and Joe’s.

There are also two things that I think it’s important to know before picking up the book. First, there is no train to Berlin. The train to Berlin in the title is a metaphor. Eliza and Alex meet on a night train to Cornwall and then later promise to see each other in Berlin alongside the liberating forces. (Eliza as a nurse and war artist, Alex as a war correspondent). But of course the liberators didn’t take trains. There are two trains in this book. One is the train to Cornwall ridden at two different time periods. The other is a train in Europe but its destination is not Berlin.

Second, we do not actually get closure on Eliza and Alex’s story. We never find out exactly what happened to them – either as a couple or how and when they died. There’s a passing mention that Ellie’s grandmother (great-grandmother?) who was friends with Eliza inherited the Cornwall property from her a few years ago. It could be implied that she passed a few years ago or it could be understood to mean something different. The other confusing thing about this is if Ellie is Eliza reincarnated, Eliza passing a few years ago when Ellie is in her 20s at the moment doesn’t make sense for a reincarnation. So there’s a lot of loose ends with regards to Eliza and Alex that are frustrating.

I’m not a complete stickler for total historic accuracy in historic fiction and even less so with a historic romance, but I will mention there was one plot point in particular that was so unlikely given what we know about WWII that it did make me grumpy. I can’t discuss in detail without plot spoiling. Perhaps you would feel more able to give it a pass than me. It comes toward the very end of the book.

So, overall, while I enjoyed the experience of the read right up until the end, I did feel like it could have been a better story with some rearrangement and a less metaphorical title.

3 out of 5 stars

Length: 400 pages – average but on the longer side

Source: NetGalley

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