High as the Heavens by Kate Breslin ARC #Bookreview

Title: High as the Heavens
Author: Kate Breslin
Publisher: Bethany House
Published Date: June 6th 2017
Genre: Historical Fiction, Christian Fiction, WWI
Page Count:393
Format: Kindle

My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Goodreads Summary: 
In 1917, Evelyn Marche is just one of many women who has been widowed by the war. A British nurse trapped in German-occupied Brussels, she spends her days working at a hospital and her nights as a waitress in her aunt and uncle's café. Eve also has a carefully guarded secret keeping her in constant danger: She's a spy working for a Belgian resistance group in league with the British Secret Service.

When a British plane crashes in Brussels Park, Eve is the first to reach the downed plane and is shocked to discover she recognizes the badly injured pilot. British RFC Captain Simon Forrester is now a prisoner of war, and Eve knows he could be shot as a spy at any time. She risks her own life to hide him from the Germans, but as the danger mounts and the secrets between them grow, their chance of survival looks grim. And even if they do make it out alive, the truth of what lies between them may be more than any love can overcome. 

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 My Review:

"She was caught between two worlds: the one her desperation had forced upon her, and the other a world she's once dreamed of sharing with him. "

If you loved Not by Sight than you'll love this book to!

"She was doing far more than simply helping her mother's people; she was playing a dangerous game with high stakes."

Eve is a young woman, who lost her husband very early on in WWI. After losing him she went to live with her mother and young siblings in Belgium. Where tragedy ended up striking once again. This lead to another move with her mother to live with a different Aunt and Uncle. After what happened in both of these major life events, Eve is rattled and heartbroken. She is going through the motions of being a Red Cross nurse and a spy. That is until one night on a mission a plane crashes and she rushes to help thinking it could be the persons he was supposed to meet. But who it really is will not only give her the surprise of her life, but also make her start taking even more risks.

"Now her decisions struck him as tactical. Her mind weighed options with cool reason, making life-and-death decisions and taking incredible risks."

Overall I really loved this book. I ended up caring so much for not only Eve, but her family and friends. While we mainly see things from her perspective we occasionally see things from others point of view as well. For me this always make it so much more enjoyable because we get to see more of what is happening the place that we are, and to see how others are dealing with the same type of struggles. The romance was a side part of the story once again and I love that in books so much! Instead the focus was on Eve's work as a nurse and a spy and trying to find her younger siblings all while keeping herself and her family out of harms way. When it came to finding out who was making things difficult for those in the spy group, I was surprised by who it was and was pretty upset that they would do such a thing. For those worried about the religious parts of this book, I hardly noticed any mention of God or religion, until we got to the end and even then it was brief. This is more of a story about the struggles faced during WWI and how some people might have survived.

"I couldn't let another boy lose his life because of me. I have been lost for a long time, husband. I had to find my way back. Today, God gave me that change."

While this story is a work of fiction Eve was based off of three incredible woman in WWI: Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Petit, and Martha Mckenna who I will be trying to learn more about now.
WWI books are hard to find in the fiction world for the most part until recently. This is something that I'm really enjoying, while we know a lot about WWII, what I know about WWI is minimal and it is slowly changing with the help of books like this. This time in with the fact that nurses would sneak out allied patients in order to keep them from becoming POW. Also flashlights/torches were also starting to be used at this time. (They got the name flashlights because the battery life wasn't the best meaning they would turn them on and off quickly in order to make them last longer.)

I'm so happy to see that Breslin learned from her book For Such A Time (I'll be posting a review for this on the June 12), to not make a romance happen between certain people.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bethany House for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.