When I first read the description of The Woman With Two Shadows, a debut novel by Sarah James, I thought it sounded very intriguing and right up my alley. A historical fiction that takes place right after Germany has surrendered after WWII in a small town in Tennessee. This town was built by the government and is run by the army to further the research on the Manhattan Project.

Things I liked:
-strong female main character
-lots of twists and turns to keep you engaged
-historical faction with a touch of love story to keep things interesting
-good writing style, easy to read/follow, moved at a good pace.

However the characters were unlikable and the story line was not convincing. I have read some fiction that almost makes you believe it really happened but this fell just a little short in my opinion. Having said that, with this being a debut novel, I will be eager to read the next novel by this author and see what topic she selects next.

Lillian and Eleanor are twins and complete opposites. Lillian is brainy, smart, planning to go to Harvard for graduate school, she is socially awkward and a introvert, prefering to be in a lab or with a book than interacting with other people. Eleanor is a outgoing social butterfly who is intent upon pursuing an acting career, loves the latest fashions and whose social calendar is always full. After a betrayal and falling out between the two sisters Eleanor takes a mysterious job somewhere in Tennessee.. Lillian hasn't heard from her in months when she gets a frantic phone call that Eleanor has disappeared.
From that point on I will tell no more so as not to give any spoilers.I enjoyed this story it did hold my interest and some of the historical facts, like the size of the army base village where the Manhattan Project was developed, the scope of it was amazing, they had their own city, hidden away, a fully functional city like any other in the country, just secret. The secrecy amazes me, that something that size could even be kept a secret is amazing.
What I did not like about this book was for one, Lillian, her character is not likeable, she is selfish and self-centered. I also do not think the scientists were portrayed very realistically, but who knows, that is just my opinion. The story does grab you and leads you through a twisting, turning path to the deadly conclusion which just made me angry at the end! This book is nicely paced and I read it in a day.
I will give it a 4 star rating and recommend to historical fiction fans who want a fast paced adventure along with a dose of historical facts.
Thank you to the publishers at Source Books Landmark and to Net Galley for the free ARC, I am leaving my honest review in return.

I am a big historical fiction and thriller reader. And this book had the best of both worlds. I really enjoyed this book. I thought the plot was really good. I liked the setting of this book. OMG the ending of this book wow!! I think this needs to be one that you read. So good.

“We built something terrible. We’ve made the world terrible. How can you not see that? How can you not feel the weight of that inside you?”

This is an ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING debut historical novel about one of the most closely held secrets of WW2 and a woman caught up in it when she follows her missing sister to the mysterious city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

If you are a STEM teacher or simply interested in learning more about the Manhattan Project, this book will most definitely appeal to you.

Like the author, I found it surprising that a group of the smartest Americans in 1943-1945, ones who daily question everything and rely on evidence, could so easily press pause and ‘stop thinking’ when it suited them. Here was a town of several thousand people doing various seemingly menial, but extremely necessary jobs, day in and day out without knowing how they were helping the war effort. How could they live like that?! Wouldn’t you want to know?! Only a handful could be trusted with the secret of the atom bomb and were threatened if they ever talked about their job to outsiders! Oak Ridge, TN was a secret city. It wasn’t on a map, its existence was never acknowledged by the government during the war, and almost none of the residents know that they were working on a new type of bomb, only some kind of war effort. I’m curious to find out how the knowledge of what they had been doing affected them after Hiroshima.

Since learning about the Manhatten Project, I’ve questioned how history would have been different had the scientists and calutron girls working on the fusion reactions known what they were developing.

If you enjoy mysteries, cover-ups, missing people, and conspiracy theories, this is a good read! I loved the name-dropping of famous mathematicians and scientists and appreciated the fabulous lessons the author presented in furthering our knowledge in this field. Congratulations to the author for a great title and to the graphic design team for a fabulous cover.

I’m still thinking about Lillian putting on Eleanor’s boots and the realization that occurred!

Somewhat forgotten after the war, the calutron girls’ stories are making a comeback. Now I’m excited to read Kiernan’s “The Girls of Atomic City” and Beard’s “The Atomic City Girls.”

This advance copy was gifted to me by Sarah James, SOURCEBOOKS Landmark, and NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.

Wonderfully written, great characters, good pace. Loved it! Thanks to the publisher, author and netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

Eleanore and Lillian Kaufman are identical twins with opposite personalities. Eleanore is interested in makeup, performing in theatre, and giving singing lessons whereas Lillian has a love of mathematics and physics and has no time for girly pastimes. Lillian has her sights set on getting the Allerton Prize to get into Harvard. Eleanore’s goal is to gain a critical acting role. Unfortunately, the sisters have a falling out and Eleanore goes with her boyfriend, Max, to Oak Ridge Tennessee to work on a top secret project for the military.

After a couple of months, Lillian hasn’t heard from Eleanore and Max calls and asks her to come to Tennessee because Eleanore has gone missing. Will Lillian be able to find her missing sister or will she find her place at Clinton Engineering Works on the top secret project?

This book is based on The Manhattan Project and the military’s race to build an atomic bomb before other countries, even though Germany had already surrendered. I also didn’t know there were experiments conducted on people with radioactive materials!

For a debut novel by Ms. James, I did find the research and writing well done. The main reason for a 3 star review was simply characters that were unbelievable. I did have difficulty getting "into" the storyline.
Ms. James does show talent and should be appreciated for her research and writing skills.

The Woman with Two Shadows is intriguing beyond compare. Sarah James crafts an ingenious story based on perhaps the most threatening world event in the 20th century; she articulates a mystery as fascinating as anything I have previously read.

The narrative is in the first person of Lillian Kaufman, the 7-minute-elder twin to Eleanor Kaufman. Lillian is a brilliant mathematician with ambitions to win the Allerton Prize and gain her place at Harvard University. She was obsessed; mathematics was her life, and there was no room for typical girly pastimes. On the other hand, Eleanor represents the epitome of girly and uses her outgoing personality to gain her most wanted desire; a critical acting role. She gets an immense opportunity to try for a lead role, but the timetable threatens Lillian's plans to go to Harvard, and the two have a falling out.

When Eleanor's acting role gets postponed, she joins the army on March 30th, 1945, and goes off to Tennessee, leaving an unusual coolness between the twins. After two months, Lillian has heard nothing from Eleanor; Max Medelson phones Lillian and asks her to come to Tennessee because Eleanor has disappeared.

I love the way Sarah James juxtaposes identical twins with different personalities and provides a detailed look at how Lillian manages to assume Eleanor's psyche. I enjoyed the construction technique, which includes using parts of the beginning and end of the story in layers and repeating the method as many times as required, thus making the story exciting all the way through. In addition, the prose expeditiously moves the story along in all its intricate details. A bonus for this reader is the inclusion of many rules of physics to explain both scientific and non-scientific concepts.

The author reveals a delightfully complicated coming-of-age interest for Lillian and Eleanor: involving Max Medelson, a physicist whom Lillian thinks of as an idiot; and Dr. Andrew Ennis (famous as the man who yelled at Niels Bohr), who occupies the critical position of Project Director at the Clinton Engineering Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

I rate The Woman with Two Shadows 5 out of 5 stars for its passion, creativity, and research - all in a highly readable package. I found nothing to dislike; however, some readers may not wish to ponder the moral dilemmas re-examined through Lillian's, Max's, and Andrew's discussions.

I recommend it to scientists, physicists, politicians, and institutions of learning with the caveat that a critical theme represents a dark reflection of human nature.

This one was an ok read for me I loved the history behind it and the setting but I couldn’t engage with the characters but overall it was a good read,
Thanks for letting me review this book to Netgalley and the publisher

For those readers of historical fiction, this book will interest you. Set in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the 1940's. the novel is about people involved in working on the atomic bomb. A woman's twin sister who was working there has mysteriously disappeared, the other sister assumes her identity to find out what happened to her. Maybe because I have read similar stories about this time and place but this book just did not keep my attention.

This was an interesting world war 2 fiction about a secret facility in the US towards the waning years of the war. It is the story of twins, of how one sister goes missing and the other comes in to find out what went wrong. It is the story of relationships and of how two people can be so different yet so connected. It is an endearing story that is worth atleast a one time read.

First let me thank Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for me honest review. I was happy to read this book, and I am happy to provide my honest review.

I knew nothing going into this book about the camp in Tennessee and its association with the Manhattan Project. So right off the bat this book had an interesting premise, hence my interest.

What I enjoyed: finding out more about the inner workings of the Manhattan project, and realizing just how large in scope the project was. I found it interesting that they were conducting experiments on people with radioactive materials, and that they were doing this well past the time of Germany's surrender.

The perspective of the scientists on this project, who sought to push the technology in spite of the obvious moral dilemma a weapon of that magnitude posed is compelling. How do we not see these scientists as mad men?

I was disappointed in the lack of exploration into the medical experimentation, frankly that was such an interesting component to this story, its what held my attention, but Lillian's trip into the hospital and their learning what happened to Betty's boyfriend, was so short and abrupt that there was really no conclusion. It was like, this happened, it horrible, but that's it, time to move on to the love story.

Lillian is not a likable character. I think the author tried to make her complex, the dichotomy of the twins was certainly interesting. But Lillian herself was not at all likable. And the love story between her and Ennis, is sort of a strange addition. The character of Ennis himself, was probably my favorite. He was complex, he had secrets, he was the madman scientists pushing the envelope beyond what is deemed moral.

I don't know, I felt like this story didn't go in the direction I thought it would, and therefore the story wasn't quite as compelling as I had hoped. The writing itself was good, it certainly kept my attention. I would have enjoyed more exploration into the human experimentation and the results of the testing of the bombs. And of course an afterward where the characters are force to come to some sort of grip with their role in the morality of creating the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? did they feel remorse for that? Was the tragedy of the story merely a casualty in the name of progress and intellectual superiority?

Love the setting for this one, a "secret" city, Oak RIdge, TN, in WWII. Lillian is a bossy, orderly woman whose twin sister, Eleanor, has gone missing from Oak Ridge. She travels to Oak Ridge and assumes her sister's identity to figure out what has happened to her sister, and what is going on in Oak Ridge. I am a sucker for twins in novels, especially in trading places. I was interested in both mysteries and enjoyed the ride.

I think fans of historical fiction will find much to enjoy in THE WOMAN WITH TWO SHADOWS. The premise is fantastic and I love how the author picked a portion of American history that some readers won't be immediately familiar with. I grew up in western NC so I have heard about Oak Ridge but didn't, of course, know the details of what went on there.

I also really enjoyed the missing sister aspect to the plot, which keeps the reader turning the pages.

Like other early readers, I had a little bit of a hard time keeping the characters straight at first, but I quickly settled in to the narrative.

I look forward to reading more from this author.

“The Woman with Two Shadows” is a debut novel by Sarah James.

I had a difficult time keeping Lillian and Eleanor apart for about 20% of this book. Eventually I realized that the main focus was on Lillian trying to find out where Eleanor went. Lillian and Eleanor are identical twins with very different personalities. Lillian is more orderly thinking (science is her jam) while Eleanor is more whatever happens, happens. Lillian gets a phone call from a man Eleanor dated - saying that Eleanor’s gone missing. Lillian decides to go to Oak Ridge, TN in order to find her sister. While in Oak Ridge, Lillian (who is pretending to be Eleanor) learns that Eleanor was seeing a prominent scientist - and Lillian becomes a member of his scientific group. From there, questions arise - what happened to Eleanor? Who are the ‘spies’ in Oak Ridge - and on whose side are they passing on secrets? What is the big secret in Oak Ridge?

That’s the background of the story. I will admit that while I’ve read a tiny bit about Oak Ridge previously, I ended up doing a bit of research online - which at times cleared up what was happening on the pages. I think that Ms. James did a good job at explaining things in Oak Ridge, but for this reader, I needed more to understand what was going on - fission vs fusion was okay, but I actually ended up chatting with a science major friend for further scientific details (unlike Lillian, I don’t think in physics, math, and science - it needs to be explained a lot). There was another part where, I have to admit, I ceased reading and polled a few science friends - none agreed with a point mentioned in the book (it’s minor, but it’s about a safe). I didn’t really find Lillian likable, but I could understand (at times) why she thought and behaved the way she did (although not telling her sister something and then betraying her sister’s trust I found, well, hurtful and odd for someone with such ‘high’ values).

In some ways this book moved along at a slow pace, but then it rather galloped to an ending. I would’ve preferred this book to be more linear in telling - opposed to the flashbacks. I liked the idea of this book, but it didn’t always work in execution. I think I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. As this is Ms. James’s debut novel, I’d read another book by her as I found this, as I said, an interesting idea. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

This was an interesting read and even though I wasn't drawn to any of the characters I still found it enjoyable.

Lillian, the main character of the book and most certainly the main character in her own world isn't very likeable in my mind. Early in life she is deeply affected by her father's death and mother's existence thereafter. As a twin she makes the decision that she must be responsible for her sister Eleanor.
This is an interesting enough story. Unraveling threads give hints as to why Lillian is driven to find her missing twin. Her journey into a secret military 'town' crosses paths with Eleanor's former boyfriend and the new man her family has no knowledge of. Lillian becomes acquainted with the head of the top-secret project her sister went to work in. Andrew is intriguing and at least equal to her intelligence level. In ways he is like her. Self- centered, self-important. As she has assumed her sister's identity things get intense. The reader learns about the historical significance of this project and how it marks the world and it's future. The descriptive writing about the life and 'job' was quite interesting to me.

I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for my advanced reader's copy of this book. If nothing else, it has made me think. I learned something years ago and that is that no character can be perfect. No character can be all evil nor can one be all good. This story shows this very well. There is a lot going on in this story. In my honest opinion there was no main character who I cared about. I'm not sorry I read the book. It is different. You will have to make your own decision if you would find it interesting.

An historical mystery in which a sister searching for her missing sister in Oak Ridge Tennessee assumes her identify. I found this fiction book to be very informative about Oka Ridge Tennessee one of America’s best kept WWII secrets. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.