Ellen's suffragette mother and aunts hope that she will be a brilliant scholar or a rising star in some field, but to their horror, what she really wants to do is keep house. When she takes a position as a house-mother for an experimental school in southern Austria, she finds herself charmed by the somewhat feral children and the hapless staff -- and then she meets Marek, the groundskeeper. There's more to him than first meets the eye, and he's in Austria for some very specific reasons -- one of which is smuggling people out of the country as Hitler's influence spreads across Europe. With war looming, what will become of the school -- and of Marek and Ellen's budding romance?

More delightful writing, quirky characters, and a fun setting from Ibbotson. This is one of my top three of her romances, for although it shares many of the predictable elements of other books, it feels fresh to me. Who wouldn't love Marek's habit of defenestrating Nazis, for instance? And while I do find parts of the ending frustrating, it's notable that the lovers aren't kept apart by a mere miscommunication. All in all, a satisfying light read. ( )

Una arrebatadora historia de amor, en una Europa acechada por el fantasma de la Segunda Guerra. Ellen y Marek se conocen en Viena, adonde Ellen ha llegado para cumplir su destino. Entre la oposición de sus pintorescas tías feministas y el creiente antisemitismo, este retrato humano, idílico y a la vez una gran panorámica de la sociedad de aquel tiempo.

Usually I like Eve Ibbotson and am a devoted reader. This one just annoys the snot out of me -- it's like she took her other heroines and went as far out to the logical extreme as she could go. Ellen is jsut the perfect pinnacle of the housewifely arts -- and that would be ok, maybe, since she seems to have some spirit when it comes to disciplining children. But she's such a doormat emotionally, so flat and passive and self-sacrificing in all her romantic endeavors that I could not like her, and I liked Marek even less. ( )

This has to be one of the best books i have ever read. it made me laugh and almost cry and it made me anxious all at the same time. the ending was very well done and satisfying and i would recommend this to anyone regardless of what genre they usually prefer. ( )

Well, that was immersive, wonderful, and utterly heart-wrenching. I'm seriously impressed, as I'm reading Ibbotson's works, that while a lot of thematic elements recur, there's no sense of repetition, and I've yet to find a lead character I wasn't able to invest in significantly. That's some fine skill indeed, and this book exemplifies it well. ( )