Book Review – If I Could Tell You
By Elizabeth Wilhide
A Penguin Original
Fiction
Feb. 28, 2017
$16.00
England, 1939
309 pages

England is on the brink of war with Germany. For Julia Compton, she is at the point of her life where’s she’s asking herself, “Is there more to life than this?”

There is the familiar sense of routine daily events where she cares for her husband, Richard, and son, Peter, with the help of Henry, her housekeeper. There is the time spent discussing her husband’s job, and the regrettable preparing for Peter’s return to school. Time spent with her friend, Fiona, having a drink and conversation. What she doesn’t have is a passionate romance, no personal goals, or fulfilling career. There simply is no joy or comfort in her life. That is until her son becomes fascinated with a documentary film crew trying to capture natural scenes of fisherman in their town. Julia knows that her interest in the film crew’s artistic director is forbidden, but finds it difficult to resist her need for passion. Dougie cannot deny the attraction.

The reality of war hovers over them like a storm. Fearing for his family’s life, Dougie sends his wife and children to Canada. Which leads to an affair with Julia. Letters are exchanged when they are apart and plans for secret meetings are made. Julia thinks only of filling the emptiness inside of her and not what this can do to her marriage or son.

Then Dougie wants her to leave her husband so they can be together more. It doesn’t seem to bother him that he’s already married. Unable to veil the emotional toll the relationship is causing, Julia begins to become withdrawn. Thinking she can share her difficult situation, she speaks to Fiona about it. In time, Richard learns the truth and tells her to leave. She is no longer a part of their lives.

The transition is difficult as she no longer has servants to do her housekeeping. She feels guilty, not for breaking her wedding vows, but for no longer being a part of her son’s life. Dougie is part of a creative group that she has never experienced, very open, artistic, and they don’t follow cultural mores. They have one party after the other, as well as partners, and Julia is always concerned that another woman will lure Dougie away.

“If I Could Tell You” transports readers to England during the Blitz. It begins before Germany’s air strikes, revealing the tension and fear of what will soon arrive. Soon they witness the destruction of property and the growing loss of lives.

Decisions change lives and can be difficult to live with. Often families severed all relationships with a woman who committed adultery. She had to find her own way in the world and during a war, I can’t even imagine her concern for her son’s safety. The end of the book brings Julia to an elevation of courage and growth, loss, renewal and betrayal. It’s a book worth reading for the time period portrayed. In terms of capturing love, I didn’t feel it. Passion, yes. The author captures her characters’ fears, flaws, anger and needs far better.


Four and a half film documentaries out of five
Denise Fleischer
gottawritenetwork.wordpress.com
August 6, 2017

"If I Could Tell You"is the story of Julia, a woman living in England during the late 1930s when Europe is just getting swept up in World War II. Julia lives a fairly quiet existence in a small coastal English town, which has been relatively spared by the powers of war. Julia leaves behind her husband and son after she falls in love with a film director.

This book follows the chaos that happens after she upends her life and everything she knows. The premise of this book was interesting to me. This book is Kristen Hannah's "The Nightingale" meets "Anna Karenina." The problem with these comparisons are that those are two pretty high bars to match. Unfortunately for this book, it doesn't get close to either. There is emotion in this book as there is in the ones that it is compared to but it is not nearly as strong or heart wrenching. The reader is left wondering why Julia would upend everything as there is no thorough exploration as to how she got to where she is by the beginning of the book.

The book feels very rushed there isn't much of a lead up to Julia falling in love at all. And so it's hard to see how she's able to believe everything she has behind so quickly. There isn't any indication of turmoil in Julia's personal life so it's hard to understand why she would throw it all away.

The setting of the book was very interesting. Julia lives in a coastal town where the war is seemingly only brushing against the residents. I like the juxtaposition between the coastal town and London, which of course gets hit harder during the war.

The writing in this book was okay. The author has a tendency to do a lot of telling rather than showing particularly when it comes to some of the emotions of the various characters throughout the book. This serves to take you out of this story a little bit. Overall this book was an interesting premise but in its carryout, it fell a little bit short of expectations.

Ahhh war romances how I love you! When this one came across my desk for review, I jumped at the chance to review it. The description was tantalizing and I just knew I had to read this one!

For some reason I just love books about ill-fated or impossible romances and while this one had an adultery element, that wasn’t a deal breaker for me….in fact I was curious to see how that angle would work within the story.

England, 1939: Julia Compton has a beautifully well-ordered life. Once a promising pianist, she now has a handsome husband, a young son she adores, and a housekeeper who takes care of her comfortable home. Then, on the eve of war, a film crew arrives in her coastal town. She falls in love.

The consequences are devastating. Penniless, denied access to her son, and completely unequipped to fend for herself, she finds herself adrift in wartime London with her lover, documentary filmmaker Dougie Birdsall. While Dougie seeks truth wherever he can find it, Julia finds herself lost.

As the German invasion looms and bombs rain down on the city, she faces a choice—succumb to her fate, or fight to forge a new identity in the heat of war (Summary from Goodreads).


From the outside, Julia had the picture perfect life making some readers wonder why she would have an affair, but the heart wants what the heart wants and while I didn’t always agree with her actions I didn’t feel like I was in a position to judge her as a reader. It was hard to fault her when Dougie pursued her so relentlessly, sure her husband was a decent guy but this new love interest had a fire about him that her husband just didn’t have.

To me this seemed very real life, marriages don’t always dissolve because the husband is a jerk, sometimes love just isn’t everlasting and people simply fall out of love with each other or sometimes life and circumstances beyond the couples control also change (like a war) and the couple just can’t reconcile their marriage, these were themes that played out well in this book.

What I liked about this novel was that Wilhide showed the consequences of Julia’s choices. Ironically life isn’t exactly what Julie intends when she throws in her towel with Dougie. She finds that grass isn’t always greener which I thought was an interesting angel. Sometimes in books with adultery themes, the woman leaves her husband and everything is fine with a happily ever after which isn’t always accurate so I liked that the author portrayed this.

While I didn’t mind the adultery angle and I thought that the time period worked well in the story, I felt like the book was lacking a little luster. Not all romances are created equal in my book and this one fell a little short when it came to pace. There were parts in the book that seemed to drag on more than necessary. In addition to the pace, I could not connect with Dougie at all. Julia I could sympathize with and not judge but when it came to Dougie, something about his character just rang false to me and I never could invest in his character.

I absolutely love the cover! The cover really grabbed me and I immediately wanted to read this one just based on that. So well done cover artist!

The time period worked well in this novel and like I said, I love war romances but in this case I think this book could have been much better had the pace picked up in parts and had Dougie been a little more likable or perhaps just more ‘real’. Other reviewers have criticized that they did not feel connected to either character, but I at least liked Julia, but as I said, Dougie just wasn’t for me for some reason. While I loved aspects of this book, I couldn’t wholeheartedly give it a higher rating.

Challenge/Book Summary:

Book: If I Could Tell You by Elizabeth Wilhide

Kindle Edition, 320 pages
Published February 28th 2017 by Penguin Books (first published February 6th 2016)
ASIN B01GDLYRZS
Review copy provided by: Publisher/Author in exchange for an honest review
This book counts toward: NA

Hosted by: NA
Books for Challenge Completed: NA
Recommendation: 3 out of 5

Genre: War romance, women’s fiction, romance, WWII, historical fiction

I couldn't read the galley. The PDF was unreadable. With repetitive parts of chapters. I really can't rate it accurately. Please offer ePub.

I am so, so sadden by the outcome I had with this book. This book is right up my alley so I was thoroughly looking forward to reading it. However, it was quickly apparent that I shared no connections to the characters or the story. This is the type of story where it suffers if there is no human connection between the reader (me) and the characters. Yet, I will tell you that I held out hope that the story would get better as I progressed. I still think that there is hope for this book, I just could not stick with it to the end. I barely got a third of the way in.

Sadly, I'll have to wait for a physical copy - my e-ARC seemed to have some formatting issues. Paragraphs and dialogue would abruptly end in the middle of a sentence and a page or two later the entire scene would be duplicated.

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