Thank you to Ballantine Books and Net Galley for the chance to read and review this book. I really enjoyed this book. The story is told in two time periods-present time and the time surrounding and during World War II. In present day, Juno buys a 1931 typewriter that belonged to celebrated journalist Cordelia Chapel. Inside the case she finds an unfinished story involving Cordelia and her sister Irene. So begins her quest to find out about their lives and their relationship. This proves to be intriguing because Irene marries a German industrialist and moves to Germany so she lived on the Nazi side of the war. Cordelia is a journalist in Paris. It was so interesting to read about their different lives and how they came together. Highly recommend!

A moving look at WWII though the eyes of two sisters whose lives are affected by their choices. One is in Paris as a budding journalist and the other is stuck in Germany married to a man she is not sure she really even knew.
Highly recommend this one for anyone with a love of historical fiction and novels about the love of sisters.

In 2016, Juno Lambert, recovering from a break-up and the loss of a pregnancy, purchases an antique Underwood typewriter, which contains an unreleased manuscript by a famous journalist. In it, she discovers the story of two women - Cordelia Capel, a young woman trying to find her way through a very man-centric world, and her sister Irene, who marries a German industrialist just as Hitler is coming to power.

Told in two timelines and in three voices, The Words I Never Wrote follows Cordelia as she travels to Paris, first as a secretary at a newspaper office and then as a fashion journalist, Irene as she settles into her new married life in Germany, hob-knobbing with the upper echelons of the Nazi party and trying to reconcile her glamorous lifestyle with the bitter truth of Hitler's reign and the reality that it could turn against her at any moment, and finally, Juno as she becomes enthralled by the sisters' story and their separation.

Jane Thynne mostly skips the war itself, aside from a few relevant details, concentrating instead on Hitler's rise to power and the aftermath. Most of the book covers the sisters, so I was curious more than halfway through to see where Juno was going to fit back in. In that, we see the sweet story of a young woman reclaiming her own life after adversity.

The Words I Never Wrote also includes several historical figures - not just the usual Nazi suspects, but the likes of Kim Philby (the Cambridge Five), Martha Dodd and Janet Flanner.

What I Loved: Jane Thynne has drawn very real, very nuanced characters and given them an emotional edge that is rare. She covers events we don't usually hear about (the rise of the Nazi party and the reality of life in Germany after the war) with grace, while not shying away from the brutal reality, bringing it all into focus with the alternate lives of the two sisters and the lengths they would go to to protect each other.

What I Didn't Love: Some of the time jumps could be a little jarring.

Conclusion: A different take on the WWII historical, The Words I Never Wrote is a great addition to an overstuffed genre, filled with heartbreak, sacrifice, and redemption. I am a definite fan!

Interesting story of 2 sisters separated by marriage, war and secrets. Alternating storylines taking us from pre-world war II to today. The story is told through letters between the sisters and a found manuscript that had been lost. This is an excellent read.
Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

As the book begins we are at the wedding of the older sister Irene’s, as her life is about to begin with her new husband, she is marrying a rather well to do man who is from Germany and we are in the 1930’s.
The author also gives us a younger sister Cordelia, and we follow her as she goes about her life to become a journalist.
What put the story together, well, we are given a young woman who happens to buy a beautiful vintage typewriter, how I would love one! With the typewriter is a partial novel about the owner and that happens to be Cordelia.
We get up close and personal into the lives of these woman, their loves and losses, their daily lives, and just the survival during these horrible times.
The author puts faces on these people, and we walk in each sister’s shoes with the help of Juno, an aspiring photographer who now has the typewriter and now wants the rest of the story,

I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Ballantine Books, and was not required to give a positive review.

Tiny Synopsis: Juno is a modern day writer who stumbles upon an unfinished biography of famous journalist Cordelia Capel that was left in her vintage typewriter. She yearns to find out what happened to these sisters after they were split between England and Germany after Irene marries a German man turned Nazi. Juno travels to Berlin in search of the truth and to finish the ending for Cordelia's biography and finally learn what/why Irene decided to stay in Berlin.


My Review: 4 / 5 stars


My oh my. My last read included female journalists fighting against the male establishment and it seems to be a trend so far at least in the books I've chosen to read. This is a heartbreaking story - and slow at times - but really wonderfully written. I love WWII era stories - and reading it under Irene's view living in Nazi Germany really was eye opening and even though fiction, many of the facts were painfully real. I didn't care for some of the love interests for the women - I felt Irene's story was more intense and I really sympathized with her. At times, the author's political from current time spills over into the book ("Make Germany Great Again?" - i thought it distracted too much from the story because the similarities already clear without adding so much for the reader that it felt a bit too forced. However, I really enjoyed reading this and now wanting to similar books.

Wow. I know this starts out with Juno, a photographer at loose ends, finding letters in a typewriter and that she reappears throughout the book but she's not the focus of the story at all. It's the story of Cordelia and Irene, British sisters who are so so close until Irene marries Ernst, a German industrialist on the eve of WWII. Irene finds herself slipping into Ernst's world; she attends parties with senior Nazis and SS officers and so on. She runs her house, she deals with her in-laws, and while she is conscious of the way Germany is going, she doesn't take action for herself or others. Cordelia, by contrast, goes to Paris to work as an assistant for a newspaper and becomes a reporter. She falls in love with Torin and when he disappears in Spain, she goes back to the UK where she works for the SOE (unfortunately for Philby). As the war worsens, so do conditions in Germany and Irene's life becomes more of a challenge and she steps up. No spoilers but this is wonderfully written with characters you will care about. Juno becomes useful at the end to tie this epic up with some twists that surprised me. I went into this thinking it would be yet another women of WWII novel but I finished it with a big sigh. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This is one I'm recommending to others.

This was a solid entry in the WWII Hist Fic Genre, and an interesting perspective: a British woman that marries into a high profile German family leading up to the war ... whose side does she land on?

I much preferred one of the sister's story lines to the other, and it was somewhat disappointing in that I don't think it was the sister the author preferred me to want more of. I would have loved an entire book just about Irene's role and experience during the war (the sister that marries into a Nazi sympathizing family...). I also didn't really feel much for Cordelia, nor did I understand how she grew up to the become the famed award winning journalist - there's a lot of tell and not a lot of show in that plot line.

The everyday bits and bobs of living in Germany in the years leading up to a during the war were the stand out aspect of this book, and I really enjoyed those and would recommend for those bits and Irene's story alone.

Thank you to NetGalley & Random House - Ballentine for the opportunity to read and review this book before it's publication date! This is no way affected my review, opinions are my own.

Jane Thynne's The Words I Never Wrote employs a dual timeline that often can work beautifully, but in the case of Juno and the Capel sisters, it doesn't work quite as well.

For me, Juno is the weakest link. Her up-and-coming film star boyfriend's desertion to Hollywood has made her indecisive, and more than compulsion, her decision to go to Germany to uncover the Capel sisters' story seems to be simple avoidance. And speaking of that boyfriend of hers, every move he makes, every word he speaks is utterly predictable. It would have been better if he wasn't in the book at all, leaving Juno to follow her passion more naturally. (Or this timeline could have been left out entirely, leaving more time for the intriguing Capel sisters.)

The story of Cordelia and her sister Irene is very strong. Cordelia's career in journalism begins in 1936 Paris with fashion columns in the newspaper. But she's very politically motivated, so she doesn't describe fabrics and hemlines for long. Cordelia's older sister Irene takes a much more glamorous route. Irene marries a German industrialist and finds herself in a lakeside mansion in Berlin. The sisters are close and exchange letters, but when Cordelia learns that Irene's husband is a Nazi sympathizer, she insists that Irene takes a stand against Nazism and leave Berlin. Irene chooses to stay, and Cordelia breaks off communication.

Thynne paints a vivid portrait of Nazi Berlin before, during, and after the war that I found fascinating. How the two sisters spent the war years also kept me turning the pages, as I wondered how long it would take the younger, idealistic Cordelia to learn that there is more than one way to take a stand for what you believe in. The only other thing in The Words I Never Wrote that bothered me-- besides Juno the present-day narrator-- was the feeling that, no matter how much I learned about Cordelia and Irene, I still wasn't being let in. These two characters were still standing back and not sharing their lives fully-- and I wanted them to. I wanted to tell them that the Gestapo wasn't sitting in the room with me. I wanted to feel as though I were sharing their lives, and I wasn't being allowed to. It's this aloofness and Juno that make me like Thynne's story... but with serious reservations. Your mileage could certainly vary.

The Words I Never Wrote was an excellent historical fiction read! I actually finished it at 5am. And I love sleep! I am always interested to know how every day people live through a war. Cordelia and Irene may have chosen different paths but they were equally intriguing. They were never perfect but simply human. Juno added a great touch- explaining the rest of the story as well as showing us Berlin in the current day. It was interesting to find out some of the characters were based on real people. I found myself doing my own research when I finished. Overall, beautifully written.

I received a digital copy of this from Netgalley for a fair and honest review.

“The Words I never Wrote” is a haunting story of two English sisters torn apart by the horrors of WWII. Irene, a budding artist, marries into a German industrialist family in the mid-1930’s early in the rise of Fascism and Hitler. Her sister Cordelia meanwhile, goes to Paris in the hopes of starting her career in journalism. Both sisters quickly learn that life is more than games and tea in the garden back home in Surrey as they witness first hand the horrors of the era, and each sister, trying to survive in their own world, begins to judge the other and make assumptions, causing a painful rift between them.

The hook in this novel is that the sisters story is discovered in an unfinished manuscript in an old typewriter purchased in the present day in NYC by a budding photojournalist originally for a photo shoot. Learning the backstory of the typewriter, and having heard of Cordelia Capel who became a famous journalist. She reads the manuscript which is written as a series of letters between the sisters from the time of Irene’s marriage until the end of the war. The letters start off very open and forthright, full of opinions about the goings on around them. As the wife of an important industrialist in Nazi Germany, Irene quickly became a part of the party scene and was soon dining with the top party leaders. Her sister warned her to leave a Germany, which was difficult considering upon marriage back then a wife renounced her citizenship and became a citizen of her husband’s country and her husband had locked her passport up. An acquaintance advised her that her correspondence was being monitored as was everything she said and everywhere she went. Soon her letters became bland, talking about clothes, gardens, and the weather-making Cordelia decide her sister had become a Nazi sympathizer. Meanwhile, a friend had convinced Cordelia that she should stay and do what she could to help-that is what her sister would judge her on. And that’s just Cordelia’s story, there is Irene’s as well, but I’m going to let you read that for yourself.

I’m not going to spoil it. It’s an amazing story. I thought the inserting if the present day story was going to be unnecessary, but it comes together at the end. This is a unique perspective on life inside the Reich during WWII and an English woman living there. The author’s writing transported me, and I felt like I was sitting in the garden having tea and reading these letters. Masterful.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC.

Truly a beautiful novel seamlessly combining a modern time with the past. Intriguing from the very start! I was so invested in this whole story that I didn’t want it to come to a close! From the twist to the mixing with the modern times this historical fiction was beautiful. My heart was racing at times for the WWII characters Irene and Cordelia, other times my heart broke for them. One of my favorite WWII books lately! Definitely a must read for historical fiction fans!

Although the storyline takes two paths, one present, one past, I loved most the past in which two intelligent sisters find themselves on opposite sides in World War II. It held my attention for hours at a time. The contrast of Cordelia and Irene’s paths during the brutality of Hitler’s rise in power is vividly imagined by the author and fascinating. The heavy burdens of having to stay silent, hide allegiances, feeling alone and having to keep secrets for the sake of survival touched my heart.

Although the sisters are fictional, the author does insert supporting historical characters such as the high spirited Martha Dodd, the daughter of the US ambassador to Germany, who led an unconventional and storied life and Kim Philby who at 22 was recruited into the British Intelligence, becoming one of their most successful double agents. The little touches, the author’s eloquent prose throughout the story including beautifully written letters between Cordelia and her sister Irene were so well done, capturing my attention in the early pages when 96-year old Cordelia reflects on her storied life:”I’m fading like a book left out in sunlight, all words erasing gradually from the page.”

*will post to online venues upon publication. LOVED THIS!

Set during the tumultuous era encompassing WWII, The Words I Never Wrote is an interesting take on how easily we can misunderstand those we love.

Our story begins with an elderly journalist receiving yet another award. Cordelia Capel already has a Pulitzer, has previously been honored with the White House Correspondents Association Award and this latest trophy will be just one more piece of memorabilia gathering dust on her overcrowded shelves. It is not the keepsake Cordelia wants. “If I have to have a memento as I sit here in my apartment in the summer of my ninety-sixth year,” she tells us, “I would choose the snow globe from the nursery at Birnham Park.”

That snowglobe had been unique. Custom made in London, it depicted Cordelia’s childhood home in England - the aforementioned  Birnham Park - in perfect detail, including the two little girls who lived there. Cordelia and her older sister Irene are reproduced perfectly within the glass orb, playing on the lavish lawn of their miniaturized home. Theirs was a happy childhood, with the sisters being boon companions, who grew up to be accomplished, elegant, beautiful young women. All is bliss till 1936, when Irene gets engaged to Ernst Weissmuller, a German industrialist who plans to take her to Germany after the honeymoon. At the wedding, while wondering what to do with her own future, Cordelia impetuously agrees to work for a friend of her father’s as a secretary for the Paris office of his newspaper. As if she had sensed this would be in Cordelia’s future, Irene’s surprise gift to her sister, given as she leaves for her honeymoon, is an Underwood Portable typewriter.

In New York City in 2016, Juno Lambert is looking for the perfect prop for the portrait she is doing of an actress in a Tennessee Williams play. She plans to capture a 1940s feel in the picture, and decides to add a vintage typewriter to the paraphernalia she is including in the shot. She purchases an Underwood Portable typewriter that comes with a bonus; a 150 page story about two sisters separated by politics during WWII, written by the elderly owner right before she died.

Told from three different viewpoints - Irene, Cordelia, and Juno - this is a difficult book to review. I found the start of the tale mesmerizing. Knowing what was happening in Germany in the late 1930s, and being cognizant that France would fall to Nazi invaders just four years after Cordelia got there, I was anxious to find out what would develop with our innocent, oblivious heroines. Oddly, one thing that didn’t happen was Cordelia becoming a reporter. She covered Paris fashion for the paper for a time but mostly, after that opening chapter which spoke of her amazing career, Cordelia did whatever would help the plot move forward. Because she felt more like a tool for the development of the story line than an actual character, I had trouble connecting with her portion of the tale.

Irene’s life is the strongest and most interesting narrative in the book.  She quickly realizes that neither her husband nor the situation in Germany are what she had been led to expect. Having befriended Ernest’s Jewish secretary when she first arrived, Irene has a front row seat at the rapid deterioration of the lives of Jewish people within the regime and has to decide how she will respond to the increasing horrors they face. She’s a brave and resourceful woman, taking risks few of us would have the courage for. Shockingly, she can’t write about any of this to her sister Cordelia because the SS makes a habit of examining foreign national’s correspondence. (Of course I’m being sarcastic there.) What was genuinely shocking was that the idea of censorship never occured to Cordelia, in spite of the fact that she had been told numerous times that the Nazi party employed the Gestapo to control the information that came out of the country.  She thought that because Irene never spelled out her hatred of the Nazis in her letters, and never left her husband, she must be a Nazi sympathizer and so she cut off all contact with her. I found this simplistic view of the world on Cordelia’s part rather annoying. Or rather, I found this particular gimmick used by the author to create a separation between the sisters to be a deus ex machina. Indeed, in many ways both Juno and Cordelia seemed to exist simply to give us the story of Irene, making them almost superfluous to the tale.

Another factor related to that issue that I found irritating was the endless mansplaining put forth by Cordelia’s love interest regarding politics and ideology. I’ll grant that she needed to learn a few things but the method the author uses infantilized her. Along that same vein, the author does a giant information dump at the end of the book in Juno’s portion of the story to tell us what happened in the last thirty to fifty years in the lives of both sisters. I truly appreciated the information but struggled with how it all came out in a few brief conversations. Juno did have a storyline of her own, but I struggled to connect with her as a character as well. The most interesting portions of her story were not her own - they were what we found out about the post-war lives of Cordelia and Irene.

The complaints listed above were detriments to my enjoyment of the novel but there were many positives to the book as well. The author weaves her elegant prose with rich historical detail, covering everything from hats shaped like lamb chops in 1930s Paris fashion shows to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and the atrocities of Nazi Germany. I especially appreciated her look at the kind of thinking which allowed Hitler to take power and how that thinking became corrosive, allowing for a greater and greater decay of conscience. Like most authors writing about that time period, Ms. Thynne skillfully weaves real life characters into her text. Irene attends several parties given by high ranking Nazis and meets interesting historical personages like Martha Dodd and Kim Philby. Ms. Thynne also does a marvelous job of incorporating the working class German’s “sardonic humor” which in the war years was “as black and bitter as Turkish coffee” into her tale. One of the scenes in a bomb shelter captures that dark joviality brilliantly and humanizes, for a brief instant, the ordinary people going through extraordinary events.  Many writers demonize the Germans of that era but Ms. Thynne wisely shows us that these were people who had gone down a horrifically wrong path, whose pride in their country and way of life subsumed their decency and intellect. That highlights their actions as all the more chilling and despicable.

The Words I Never Wrote is an epic story which struggles to live up to its ambitions. It’s certainly an interesting read and one I think will satisfy readers who love dual timeline novels from the WWII era, although it lacks the brilliance to appeal outside that niche market.

Buy it at: Amazon
Visit our Amazon Storefront or shop at your local independent bookstore

I've been reading a lot of historical fiction lately. Some are really good and some not so much. Thankfully this book fell into the really good book! Its a story about two sisters who are on opposite political sides during WW2.
The focus was more on what led up to the war rather than the war itself.
This hit me hard, at least the relationship between Irene and Cordelia. Irene is married to a Nazi and he's a high ranking one. As the wife of a Nazi, she must follow the National Socialist Guide and "accept the way Germans do things". Her sister Cordelia is a fashion reporter in Paris but as time goes on, she begins reporting on the Nazi's and eventually winds up working for the occupying forces by the end of the war. Cordelia has a hard time accepting her sister's choices.
Irene, could have very easily been a character that was easy to hate, but her inner struggle came across as to how she has to deal with her choices.

We also have Juno in present time (or really 2016) who came across Cordelia's typewriter and begins a journey to discover what each sister truly experienced.

I was not expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did! Thank you to NetGally for the ARC!

I absolutely loved this story of two sisters, Cordelia and Irene, set during WWII. I loved the time span that it covered and how Juno in present day got tied into the story. The writing was beautiful and I felt like I knew these women so well by the end of the story. It was so interesting to read from Irene's perspective, being a foreigner in Berlin while WWII and the Nazi regime unfolded. She had so much strength to survive everything that she did. I also loved Cordelia's perspective as a young woman in Europe trying to become a journalist during a very difficult time. I really enjoyed this story. Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley for my ARC. Two very close sisters. One stays behind in London and one is married to a steel tycoon. They find themselves on opposite sides of WW2. How does this affect their relationship and their lives? I felt this book took too long for the same story to be told. #thesewordsineverwrote #janethynne #january2020

THE WORDS I NEVER WROTE

This is a very nice, well written, and enjoyable book. In dual timelines, current day photographer Juno Lambert purchases an old Underwood Portable typewriter and finds within it a manuscript, or half of a manuscript. It tells the story of two British sisters, Irene and Cordelia, and their separate paths during WWII.

Before the beginning of the war, Irene marries a German industrialist and moves from England to Germany to become his wife. As war breaks out, her husband’s associations with the Nazi party and his work have a profound effect on Irene. Her sister Cordelia moves to Paris to become a fashion journalist. Throughout the war, her involvement becomes much more serious and clandestine. And she falls in love with a resistance fighter.

As Juno comes to the end of the manuscript, she realizes it is not complete and her curiosity of what happens with the sisters becomes an obsession. Having the opportunity to travel to Berlin for a photojournalist assignment, Juno tries to discover what happened during the war and after to Irene and Cordelia.

I enjoyed this story very much, and I would like to thank NetGalley, Jane Thynne, and Ballantine Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Loved it!!! Loved reading about Cordelia and Irene. I liked the book didn't didn't constantly alternate between Juno and the sisters. Juno's part was perfect. She's there to find the manuscript, then we get to read all about Cordelia and Irene, then Juno is there again to discover what happened between them when the manuscript suddenly ended. The book definitely was't what I expected. I enjoyed Juno and Cordelia's stories, but my favorite was probably Irene. Irene's life in Germany with her new husband was not what she expected. Irene risked so much. She did it without anyone knowing what she was doing. She was able to rebel against her husband without him even realizing it. I hated how she was treated when the Russians arrived at her house. There were many twists and turns that I wasn't expecting. Both sisters lived interesting lives.

Definitely recommend this book. It stands out among all the WWII historical fiction books. I loved everything about it- the story, characters and writing style. This book would make a wonderful movie. Look forward to reading more books by the author.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This was a fun read.  Juno Lambert buys an old Underwood typewriter because she likes the look of it.  She finds an unfinished novel from a famous journalist.  It talks about her sister who married a German industrialist.  Juno tries to track down the details and see how it turns out.  I enjoyed the twists and turns of this story and how things were not always as they seemed.  

No language issues, which always makes a book better in my mind.