Portrait of Loyalty wraps up Roseanna M. White's Codebreaker series and what a poignant and touching conclusion! As a reader, completing a series is always bittersweet.
Spoiler Alert: You will need Kleenex for the last half of the book.
Twenty- three year old Lilian 'Lily' Blackwell volunteers as a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital, but her real passion is photography. She uses her skills in re-touching and re-creating photographs for the intelligence division in Room 40. "She'd learned to capture motion-or its story, anyway-with her camera." (White, 39).
Meeting Russian Zivon Marin at a dinner at her parents' home, she is surprised at her immediate interest and intrigue. She finds Zivon "an intriguing mass of contradictions he was. The still and the active. The formal and the informal. The studied and the earnest." (White, 83).
The friendship that flourishes between Zivon and Lily soon grows to love. Secrets and loyalties soon complicate their relationship. Can they overcome them, trust one another, and build a future together?
One quality I appreciated about Lily was how she viewed the world through her own lens. She saw beauty in God's creation and people. It reminded me to see the loveliness in this wonderful world God created for us. This seems especially important considering the circumstances we are facing in today's society.
You'll enjoy that some of the characters from Ms. White's previous series (Ladies of the Manor and Shadows Over England) appeared in Portrait of Loyalty. It's always fun to be reunited with favorite characters from previous series...felt a little like it was old home week. Ms. White makes incorporating characters from her past series look so easy and seamless, but I'm sure it took a lot of effort and planning.
If you loved WWI historical fiction, I highly recommend adding the Codebreaker series to the top of your TBR pile. The series can be read out of sequence, but I feel you'll get more appreciation and enjoyment if you read the series in order. Get ready to be swept away into meaningful stories and a beautiful recreation of another era!
~~ Portrait of Loyalty was provided to me by the author and Bethany House in return for my honest review. I received a complimentary copy of this book. All opinions expressed are my own. I was not required to write a positive review. All viewpoints expressed are my own. ~~
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