THE LAST LIFEBOAT by Hazel Gaynor

 

My thoughts

This book is a heartbreaking account of what happened during WW2 when people sent their children to other countries to keep them safe. This is a fictional account of something that actually happened in 1940. In September of 1940. 

Told from two women's lives. Lily Nicholls and Alice King. 

Lily has two young children. Georgina who is ten and Arthur who is six and a half. They are the light of Lily's eye. She loves her children more than life. When things get bad and England is getting bombed she makes the hardest decision ever. She is going to send her two children to a safer place. She wants nothing but to keep them safe from the things that are happening all around her. She's already lost her husband and can't fathom losing her children. Just keep them safe. That's all she wants. That's all anyone wanted that sent their children to safety at this time.

Alice is a woman who wants to do something different with her life. She's a little older and has never been married. She was very close to her father and is very close to her sister and brother. She applies to be an escort for the children who will be evacuated. Her life is about to change is many ways. More than she ever expected.

This book takes you through so much. So much anguish and heartbreak. So much loss. It's all about one lifeboat that carries what remains of the last passengers from the Carlisle, the ship carrying children to safety. Everyone has had to get off this ship after it was torpedoed. There are twelve lifeboats and Alice is on THE LAST LIFEBOAT!! There are five boys and one girl that she will be responsible for. Also there are several men. A lot of people didn't make it. A lot were on other lifeboats. This story is about The Last Lifeboat and what all they endured. The quick thinking. The horrors. The eight days they are at sea. Totally alone.

This book is so beautifully written. So full of deep emotion. It made me weep. I do mean weep. I did laugh a few times at the antics of some of the children but for the most part it was very sad. In a historic way sad. Hazel Gaynor has written a wonderful story here based on actual facts. Actual events. I fell in love with some of these children. Especially Arthur and Billy. Billy is one that I rooted for. He was just a little child full of wonder. Arthur was a great child also. He was so very brave. 

Do not forget to read the HISTORICAL NOTE at the end. There is a lot of info that is vital to this story there. There is no doubt that this author did a lot of good research. It's so sad that this ever happened. 

Thank you #NetGalley, #HazelGaynor, #Berkley for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts about this book.

Five huge stars. Don't let this one pass you by. Grab it and several boxes of tissue. 

Synopsis 

Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters, in a moving and triumphant new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.
 
1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring—she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher—to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas.
 
1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away.
 
When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other—one on land, the other at sea—will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.