Reviews

• Wonderful Story, Life-Like Characters, Hard to Put Down

  I love stories about WWII, but only if they are very well written and edited and very realistic. I read many of the Amazon reviews on this book before buying it, always starting with the one-star, going to the two and three-star reviews before making my decision. I decided to take a chance on this book and am very, very glad I did. Very well edited. The author obviously did a fantastic job researching the subjects, archived war files, even interviewing a surviving veteran parachutist who worked with the Dutch resistance just as the main characters did. The characters are so real, wonderfully crafted and developed, they pop off the page. Descriptions of the environments and scenery - just wonderful. Great suspense, mystery, twists and turns. So very accurate, even the weapons used by the Allies and Germans throughout the story. The story moves at a perfect pace, does not bog down. It was hard to put this book down, and I always looked forward to getting back into the story. Long chapters, alternating between 1944/45 and 1995 when the granddaughter becomes interested in her grand parents mysterious past stories. In my mind this is a clear five-star story. Mal Peet - congratulations on a wonderfully crafted tale of high adventure, personal experiences, the horrors of war and the evil inflicted upon the Dutch civilians by the invading Nazis. If you are interested in the subject matter, I recommend Tamar.

• A wonderful read

  This is a fantastic book. Having listened to the audio book I wanted to go through the story again so ordered the printed version. Although it was written for young adults it is not at all juvenile and has a fantastic plot. I have not started to read my book yet am saving it for when I have plenty of time to read large chunks in one go. I urge anyone who appreciates great story telling, excellent writing plus terrific plot to read this book. You won't regret it.

• Brilliant

  Mal Peet has become one of my favourite novelist. Loved this book, lovely cover too :-)

• Having grown up in Holland during the 2nd world war ...

  Having grown up in Holland during the 2nd world war, my wife found that this book very interesting as it is based on events & places that she identified with. Held our interest throughout. Ken

• Well written story that pulls you along

  I wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did, being neither in the target market (it's marketed as a YA novel) nor especially fond of WW2 stories, but Mal Peet's writing has a way of pulling you in, once you're past the first few pages. These could almost have been written by someone else and, as a writer myself, I suspect this is due to the fairly common mistake of overwriting and overthinking the introduction in an effort to make it as instantly irresistible as possible. But when Peet hits his stride, the writing really begins to flow and with occasional flashes of brilliant phrasing and original descriptive turn of phrase, it rewards perseverance. The book is written as an amalgam of two stories - a third-person retrospective on Grandfather Tamar's time as an SOE spy in Holland interspersed with a first-person account of young Tamar's quest to understand the contents of the box he (Grandad) has left to her after his death by suicide - and for me the former worked better than the latter. Whether this is due to Peet's difficulty expressing himself as a 15yo girl, or my terminal disinterest in the thoughts of said girl is hard to judge. Probably a combination of the two. The story is generally well structured, although the plot does fall down in two major places for me. Firstly young Tamar's father's behaviour when he learns "the family secret" is unbelievably extreme, and secondly having left home, the way he magically turns up in the middle of Tamar's quest seems way too convenient. These minor quibbles aside, along with the fact that the much-vaunted "plot twist" is sufficiently well telegraphed for any experienced reader to be able to guess it fairly early on in the narrative, Tamar provides an easy and entertaining read which deserves its place in the top quartile of our book club's back catalogue.

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