The book starts fairly well - I was interested in Lenny, and her adventure into War Office work. I was sometimes unsettled by her attitude, but I enjoyed her secret spy training and her idea of putting morse code into the knitting with the different stitches. So far, so good. But when she is dropped in France, with a new secret identity, things started to go wrong for me. Instead of sneaking around and coding things into scarves and socks and jumpers and smuggling them to the British, she manages 1 scarf, and then that doesn't even end up getting to the right people! The story turns into more of a romance, but then even that became disappointing as, without giving away spoilers, Lenny seems very changeable and I did shout 'what?!' a few times. I persevered to the end, in the hopes that things might get better, but instead we lurch back into the present day (and I had completely forgotten that we'd started there to be honest) but we never actually see Lenny relate her spy history to her family. It felt like a rushed ending to me, and I was still feeling grumpy about the lack of knitting and the dodgy romance plot.
If you don't mind a slightly random wartime story then do go ahead because there were parts I really enjoyed reading, and had the book had a different title and blurb I wouldn't have felt half as cheated! But if, like me, you're hoping for yarn-based subterfuge then I'm afraid I would recommend you look elsewhere...
With thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy in return for an honest review.
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