To Live Again

The House of Annanbrae #2

by Noreen Riols

The war is over and Katharine, supported by her family, gradually comes to terms with the death of her husband. Through her father she meets Theo and they fall deeply in love. But could she really marry a former German officer considering her first husband’s brutal end? While agonizing over this impossible dilemma Katharine is introduced to Maxime, an aloof young Frenchman whom she originally hopes never to meet again.

313 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Noreen Patricia Riols was a British novelist. During the Second World War, she worked for the Special Operations Executive, a British espionage and sabotage organisation.

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Romance novels aren't generally a favorite genre of mine, so this book might have only been 3 stars for me if I came to it with no context, but the fact that I live with the author and know that so many of the plot points come from her own life makes this stand out from all the other WWII fiction I read. It was published almost 50 years after the war by someone who lived through it and has the mindset people living during that time actually had.

At heart it's a romance, a young war widow finding love again, with a bit of a faith journey as well.

[Jerry (Rebel With a Massive Media Library) · Rating 5 out of 5]

To Live Again, the second volume in Noreen Riols' The House of Annanbrae series, is every bit as good as its predecessor. The emotions that the characters feel, as well as the events surrounding them, felt very real to me. Some might quibble about one scene at the end--which I won't give away here--but I thought the whole book was an absolutely grand experience. If you're a lover of historical fiction, Noreen Riols' The House of Annanbrae series is worth checking out; just make sure you start with Where Hope Shines Through, the first entry in the quadrilogy.