Wait for Me by Caroline Leech (review)

Upkeep of the family farm in Scotland has become difficult for seventeen-year-old Lorna and her father since her two brothers are deployed in World War II. When the local POW camp assigns them a German as a farmhand, however, she’s repulsed by the thought of inviting the enemy to her home—and then she’s shaken when she sees the disfigured soldier who she’s meant to work beside. Paul Vogel, however, is both a hard worker and a gentle soul, and it becomes clear to Lorna that Paul is, like her brothers, longing for the war to be over so he can return home. It also becomes clear to Lorna that she’s falling in love with Paul, a thorny situation in a small town with plenty of anti-German sentiment. The forbidden love plot is a tried and true favorite with romance fans, and Paul and Lorna’s secret meetings and increasingly heated kisses and the rising probability that they will be found out work together like a finely tuned machine, producing delicious combinations of sighs, gasps, and swoons. Paul is refreshingly non-broody, and while he has plenty reason to be angsty—both his mother and sister were killed in the Dresden bombing—Leech instead casts him with a quiet sense of sadness and steely determination not for revenge but for a peaceful life. Lorna is wonderfully feisty without being too modern for her era, and she approaches her romance with Paul much like she approaches most things, with wit, honesty, and compassion. The ending is far too rosy to be realistic, but it’s a forgivable offense that brings Paul and Lorna a satisfying happy ending.