It’s late 1941 in The Girls of Pearl Harbor and four nurses arrive in Hawaii to discover a paradise island where they feel sure they will be safe so far away from the war raging in Europe. Soon though their idyll is shattered, friends have been killed, they are faced with the true horrors of what bullets and bombs do to a human body and in one morning they each discover that there is nothing glamorous about war.

The friends soon learn what true devastation is, both physically and emotionally and each has to find a way to carry on, or give up. Poppy, Eva, Grace and April, four close friends with their lives ahead of them and no concept on how each of them will come close to catastrophe, or how well or badly each will cope and what a struggle it will be to push themselves to continue right until the end.

Teddy, Charlie, and the other men they meet and love along the way are equally as effected by the consequences of their own involvement in the war. Lives change forever, but by the end of the book each character has discovered more about themselves and their ability to deal with not only what is in front of them, but also what happened to them in their past.

The Girls of Pearl Harbor is one of the best, although graphic historical novels I’ve ever read and I simply could not put it down. I now can’t wait to read the rest of Soraya M Lane’s novels. Addictive, horrifying, heartbreaking, but utterly brilliant. I loved it.