I read My Dear, I wanted to tell you by Louisa Young in February, not long after reading another excellent book about World War One, I’m Memoriam by Alice Winn (see my blog). This one was also truly un-put-downable – a beautiful love story with a backdrop of horror, resilience, and ultimately, survival.

Riley is a working-class boy who gets swept up in artistic London of the early twentieth century, where he falls in love with Nadine, a match that will never be allowed due to their class difference. When he realises this in a fit of anger, he signs up to go to war, leaving both his informally adopted family and biological family behind.

On the front he meets Peter Locke, his commanding officer, and they strike up an unlikely friendship, as Riley becomes indispensable and is eventually promoted into the officer class, and together they try to cling onto sanity amidst the horror of life in the trenches. Back home, Nadine has trained as a nurse and can handle anything, but when Riley is sent home injured he tells a terrible lie to release her from what he decides will be a life of pity and duty, completely underestimating her strength and the depth of her love. It is strong women who prevail in this story, nursing the men who are acting as the experiments in the dawn of modern plastic surgery (fascinatingly told) and coaxing them slowly back to life.

This is a book that will stay with me for a long time. A new telling of the war and one that ultimately gives you hope in human endurance and the power of love.