The Poppy Sisters: Step into the past with this captivating historical novel, filled with heart-wrenching moments and unforgettable characters in 2024

Historical fiction at its very best
Of all the books I have read this week, The Poppy Sisters is my favorite. The other nine books were good, but The Poppy Sisters grabbed me and didn’t let me go until I finished it. I forgot about sleeping because I couldn’t forget about Phoebe and Celia.Phoebe and Celia are sisters working as nurses during World War One. It was a brilliant idea to use the two sisters as the main characters because the reader gets to experience two totally different scenarios. Phoebe is on the Island of Jersey working in a Prisoner-of-War camp. Celia is stationed in France near the frontline caring for the wounded.Their stories run parallel in time allowing the reader to see two different perspectives for the same time period. Prisoners play in the snow on Jersey and have warm places to dry off. Soldiers in the trenches of France are fighting for their lives in mud, never being able to get dry.The reader learns what it was like for Phoebe and others to work around POWs. Not everyone was happy to care for the Germans. Talk about drama!!!!! I learned quite a lot from following her story and what happened at the camp.It was following Celia’s story that affected me the most. The horrors of war experienced by Celia left me wondering how they carried on. What soldiers experienced left me in tears. It never seemed to stop. The hospital in France was challenged to keep up with the wounded on numerous occasions even having to build more wards.The Poppy Sisters is so much more than just a story about the medical side of World War One. As they say “life goes on.” Phoebe and Celia both fall in love. They weren’t supposed to fall for the men they did adding even more drama and shocking moments to the story. Their love lives, or attempted love lives, made for a great read. Emotion rolled off the pages. I was frequently shocked by what happened. But it was so believable.Grab some tissues. There is a lot of sadness. The gore was easy to imagine with the descriptions given by the author. The men suffered horribly. The day to day struggles gutted me. Even with all the sadness the story is a very enlightening read. The Poppy Sisters has given me a lot to think about. The Poppy Sisters has me digging more into the past to learn of the sacrifices that were made.09/01/23 I couldn’t help myself and read The Poppy Sisters again. Still a favorite.

I fast forwarded to the end
I read about halfway and then skimmed through to the end to get the general gist of the story and the ending. Th story seemed shallow or undeveloped somehow. Anyway I found myself uninterested in the characters.

Love in time of war
Two sisters, having recently lost their parents and brother in a Zeppelin bombing raid, work through their grief as nurses in Carr’s novel of World War I. The story alternates chapters between events narrated by Celia, a trained nurse posted at a prison camp hospital on the Isle of Jersey, and her younger sister Phoebe, a VAD who works at a hospital for allied wounded in France. Though cover and packaging identify this as historical fiction, the book straddles the line between that and historical romance, as recreation of the time period takes a back seat to the ups and downs of the sisters’ romantic lives. Although, understandably, nurses were forbidden to develop romantic entanglements with their patients, both take the dangerous step of falling in love with men initially under their care, Phoebe with architect Archie and Celia, even more perilously, with German doctor and prisoner of war Otto. As the war years drag on, their new friend Jocasta, the widowed sister of the surgeon at Phoebe’s hospital, offers respite to both sisters at her home in a tiny Cornish village, helping them cope with the grief of losses, the stress first of nursing the desperately wounded, then victims of the devastating Spanish flu epidemic, and the uncertainties of loving soldiers in the midst of a war that will wipe out almost a whole generation of men.

Oh the sentimental value of each moment!
Loved this journey with the two sisters and their disrupted and separate war romances. A must read for a lonely woman like me.

It was a great story that i really enjoyed reading

What happened to 2 sisters who were separated because of the war. How they survived and lived through it. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

This was ok for a quick read. Nothing of any surprise in this story it was all a bit predictable. The only thing that irked me was the over the top niceties, I know this is written for a time in our lives when manner were mor prominent perhaps but this was OTT