I have to say I really enjoyed this book about Valentine Grey, a woman who went to war instead of her cousin. She was indeed a very strong woman who endured the incredible hardships that war impose on it's men and she turned out to be every bit as capable as the men around her! I really can't understand mongoosenamedt's comment about not wanting to read about strong women in historical fiction! That is just ludicrous! There are strong women in every era, they are not a modern phenomena by any means. ( )

I wasn't really going to write a review, but after reading mongoosenamedt's review, I felt I had to reply: do they think that 'strong women' are a construct of modern times? That throughout history there weren't strong women? That ideas about equality and anti-war and anti- any-ism only appeared in the late 20th century? How silly (or young...) can you be?

I loved this book, I thought it was something and it turned out to be so much more, and it hit me deeply and made me think about lots of things... one of which is that this book shows yet another example of how our knowledge of history is shaped by the school curriculum :/ ( )

"I enjoyed the strong female lead but she's a strong woman who sounds like she could be from our time...which unfortunately is not what I want from historical fiction written so evocatively as this."
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/valentine-grey-sandi-toksvig.html ( )