These kids in a war…so keen and ignorant one minute and dead or traumatised the next. What a tragedy, I can hardly keep reading…

‘A bit of a fright?’ How stupid can you be? This has cost three (secretly hoping two) lives!!

Every time I look at the cover of this book (I have the red and green one with the black and white photo it reminds me of the My Policeman movie with Harry Styles. I think in one scene he and his lover also walk away with their heads down…

I was thinking, I haven’t read the My Policeman book, but it might be something for the recommendation page of In Memoriam? It is also a love story of two men in a time when relations like that weren’t accepted…Who has read it?

I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about this book since I put it aside last night. Part of me can’t stop reading, and another part thinks, “Hmm, maybe it’s not that good?” but I can’t really explain why. Something that bothers me is how rushed everything feels. There are so many characters, and we hardly get to know them. Some of them die before I even understand who they’re supposed to be.

With Elwood and Gaunt, the letters and flashbacks help a bit, but still…. I don’t want to say the characters are flat, not at all, just that there seems to be so much more to them. I feel like if I knew them better, I’d feel the book more strongly. Maybe I should just keep reading before I make up my mind.

I also think the rushed feeling might be intentional, like Winn wants to show how fast these people grow up and how young they die, before they even get to know each other or themselves fully.