1939, Vivi and Nathan have a whirlwind romance and marry quickly. But they are soon separated by war and become emotionally distant as well. Nathan returns home injured and they need to rediscover their relationship. Can Vivi live with Nathan’s past…?
The Officer’s Wife is an historical novel set in three parts: at the start, end and after the Second World War.
Vivi is a glamorous American heiress who travels to England in 1939. She meets dashing Nathan, a naval officer and they fall in love. Shortly after their marriage he leaves to fight and Vivi is stuck in his family home with his parents. She feels awkward and frustrated as a wife without a husband and as a foreigner in a war-torn land. Meanwhile Nathan meets a nurse who he remembers from his childhood and this meeting has huge consequences for all of the main characters.
Chance and coincidence play a key role in this book. Nathan and Elise have a chance encounter on a beach as children then reunite when she nurses him after his injury. Another accident changes the lives of all the main characters significantly as we move into the final part of the books.
I felt desperately sad for Vivi as she is forced into a life she didn’t want. Nathan’s behaviour was appalling even when you accept that you can’t help who you fall in love with. Luckily Vivi has enough strength for both of them and makes the best of her situation.
There were some unexpected twists in the final part of the book. Secrets from the past are expanded upon and revealed which creates additional tension as we wonder how events will play out.
The Officer’s Wife is an engaging and emotionally tense historical novel.
The Officer’s Wife
1939 – American heiress Vivi Miles falls for naval officer Nathan as soon as she arrives in England. And, under the threat of war, they marry in a whirlwind before he leaves to join his ship.
When Nathan returns from Dunkirk injured, he is distant, aloof, and no longer the man Vivi fell in love with. But it’s not just because of his brutal experiences of war. Nathan has a secret and Vivi suspects it’s linked to the mysterious evacuee at the secluded house in the woods on his Kent estate.
As war continues to rage, Vivi battles her own grief and loneliness, and tries to find out the truth of the girl’s identity, uncovering a scandal from the past.
Catherine Law lives in Kent, 10 minutes from the sea, having grown up in Harrow. And ever since she was a child, she has loved to create stories. She writes romantic novels set in the first half of the 20th century, in and around the First and Second World Wars. Her books are inspired by the tales our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers tell us, and the secrets they keep.
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