The Last Lifeboat

By: Hazel Gaynor

Narrated by: Billie Fulford-Brown

A Most Anticipated Book by Real Simple ∙ SheReads ∙ BookBub ∙ and more!

Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters, in a moving and triumphant new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.

1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring—she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher—to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas.

1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away.

When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other—one on land, the other at sea—will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.

A WONDERFUL STORY OF PERSEVERANCE

Wow…what a great novel! It was so good, I finished it in ONE day. I kept telling myself to turn the book off and save some of it for later, but I found myself unable to tear myself away from it.

There was a lot of sadness and despair in this story, but it is offset by an equal amount of hope and joy. The emotions of the mothers in this book are so deep…you can FEEL their profound sadness and their deep feelings of hope.

The perseverance and the will to live of the people in the lifeboat is astounding. How they endured, how they found moments of joy and hope, how they found moments of beauty in their surrounding and an ability to appreciate them in the midst of what they were enduring just astounds me.

There was not a moment in this book in which my attention strayed or in which I felt bored. I didn’t want this book to end. I know this book was JUST released, but I hope Ms. Gaynor is already hard at work on her next novel.

Don’t miss this book — it’s one of the best credits I’ve ever spent.

Tragic Fact told with Compassion

This story is remarkable, tragic, horrific, heroic, poignant, and inconsolable. It is a mournful reminder of the atrocities of the patriarchy and the men who seek domination through brutality and the thousands of lives that every war a man has started has systematically ended in civilian's death. The barbaric fodder that women and children become in spoiled men's tantrums for supremacy. Women, who not only send their sons to war but also bury their children when that war lands on their soil, who never had a say in any of it...makes you wonder why men are allowed any role in decision making when historically they have NEVER made peace, safety or happiness their priority. Maybe it's time women ran the world - Men have consistently made it worse, through egos, brutality, tyranny, exploitation and oppression. I cannot imagine mother's ruling countries sending their children into war. They would argue it out amoung the adults before ever even thinking of sending their children into a massacre.
This is a very sad story that should never be forgotten. Not only for the lives lost but because of the disgraceful acts of violence done by mankind. That we have yet to learn not to repeat.

Powerful, Educational, and Evoking

I have just finished this story. I love everything about it. I am not a big audio book listener. I tend to wander with my thoughts. However, this story had me enraptured. The narration was as beautiful as the story itself. I could feel the emotion that she was emanating. Several times having goose bumps. It was an emotional rollercoaster in a good way. As the other person who reviewed this before myself, this was the best credit I have ever spent as well. I highly recommend it.

Realistic, sad, suspenseful

I loved everything. It is heartbreaking and so relatable. The pain of war, the joy of love and family.

I couldn’t stop listening to it.

I didn’t know this heartbreaking piece of history prior to reading this book. It was beautifully written