The Poppy Sisters
Stationed at the Base Hospital in Étaples, VAD Phoebe Robertson is often overwhelmed by the realities of war, but she feels an instant attraction to one of her patients, Captain Archie Bailey. Her sister Celia, a professional nurse, has just been deployed to a POW camp on Jersey and is dubious about treating enemy soldiers – until she meets Otto Hoffmann. But it’s 1916 and, with no end to the war in sight, both sisters know every moment spent with the man they love might be their last…
I wanted to like this novel for its setting. But both couples fall in love at first sight and declare eternal love within days of meeting, leaving the author nowhere to go in terms of plot or character development. This leads to repetitive conversations, in which the man declares his love, the nurse chides him for jeopardising her position, he apologises, she feels guilty and there are more declarations of love. The characters are all so blandly, uniformly nice (apart from the one-dimensional villain) that they’re practically identical. Carr ‘tells’ their every thought and emotion, rather than showing them.
Instead, I found myself pondering questions like: why is an Austrian doctor in the German infantry, rather than the Austro-Hungarian medical corps? Why would a Zeppelin bomb a village of no strategic importance? Is the author aware that by the winter of 1916-17, there were severe food shortages in Britain due to the U-boat blockade of the Atlantic or that VADs weren’t paid (hence most had independent means or wealthy parents)?
I hate to say it, but I was bored.
