CBR 15 Bingo – Hold Steady: To survive the war, Tess and Flor have to make a stand and hold steady in their efforts to undermine the Japanese occupiers.
After Japan invades and occupies the Philippines during WW2, American nurse Tess and Filipino university student Flor must do whatever they can to survive and help those around them.
In my ongoing quest to find WW2 historical novels which don’t simply rehash the experience of the London Blitz or the French resistance, I have looked to the Pacific theatre, which has not disappointed me thus far. Though I had already read We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese, a non-fiction account of this episode of the war, I was excited to tackle it from other perspectives.
This is a fast-paced, intense book about life under Japanese occupation. What really set the story apart for me (perhaps depressingly) was that the author did not present only the viewpoint of ex-pat Tess but also citizen Flor, who is invested in the fate of the Philippines that Tess is not and thus adds much urgency to the story. I felt like I really got a sense of how American colonization permeated society, and an understanding of what it might have been like to live in the Philippines around this time.
However, I did feel like the plot itself meandered a bit – while we follow the various travails of Flor and Tess, there was no real over-arching story to follow beyond their waiting liberation. I thought the romances were a little lackluster, and did not get as invested in them as I wished I could. And finally, I did think the ending of the book was a little contrived – like the lack of communication was necessary for more oomph to the finale and not much else.