Eva Marie Everson’s The One True Love of Alice-Ann

Living in rural Georgia in 1941, sixteen-year-old Alice-Ann has her heart set on her brother’s friend Mack; despite their five-year age gap, Alice-Ann knows she can make Mack see her for the woman she’ll become. But when they receive news of the attack on Pearl Harbor and Mack decides to enlist, Alice-Ann realizes she must declare her love before he leaves.

Though promising to write, Mack leaves without confirmation that her love is returned. But Alice-Ann is determined to wear the wedding dress her maiden aunt never had a chance to wear—having lost her fiancé in the Great War. As their correspondence continues over the next three years, Mack and Alice-Ann are drawn closer together. But then Mack’s letters cease altogether, leaving Alice-Ann to fear history repeating itself.

Dreading the war will leave her with a beautiful dress and no happily ever after, Alice-Ann fills her days with work and caring for her best friend’s war-torn brother, Carlton. As time passes and their friendship develops into something more, Alice-Ann wonders if she’ll ever be prepared to say good-bye to her one true love and embrace the future God has in store with a newfound love. Or will a sudden call from overseas change everything?

Review

I was in the mood for a WWII fiction novel and stumbled across this one. My thoughts:

What I liked

Alice-Ann. Though Alice-Ann isn’t perfect (she has her whiny moments), I very much enjoyed being in her head. This is very much a coming of age novel. Alice-Ann starts off at sixteen years of age filled with all kinds of romantic notions, but the war and time forces her to grow up and to learn truth vs. fiction. But more than that, she comes across as real. A lot of her concerns and the things she deals with feels genuine and manages to translate across time and page.

The romance. It was lovely and my favorite kind: one based on the foundation of friendship.

History. You don’t get a whole lot about the battles (though you learn a bit about the happenings in the Pacific), but you do get to see how the war affected small town America…especially when everyone knew everyone there was to know in that town.

Relationships. The novel isn’t just a romance. You get Alice-Ann’s relationship with her father, her sister-in-law, her friends (old and new). The relationships are complex and fully nuanced so that no one comes across as one dimensional.

Spiritually, the characters often pray and attend service.

What I didn’t like

There is something that happens in regards to the romance that is predictable–especially in war time romance novels. That said, I thought the author did a lovely job of dealing with it.

Romantic scale: 7.5

Overall, I very much enjoyed it. It did exactly what I wanted to do and gave me an entertaining wartime romance.