The Room on Rue Amélie

American Ruby Benoit voluntarily stays in Nazi-occupied Paris to support her French husband but is frustrated by his refusal to confide the details of his wartime activities. Determined to prove that he's wrong to shelter her, Ruby teams up with her Jewish neighbors' precocious young daughter, Charlotte, to defy the Nazis despite the growing risks. The stakes get even higher when Ruby, now a widow, falls for a handsome Allied pilot stranded behind enemy lines. The subject matter of Harmel's (The Life Intended) latest novel overlaps somewhat with recent book club favorites Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale and Martha Hall Kelly's Lilac Girls but differs in ultimately focusing primarily on the development of a wartime romance rather than on immersive details of life under German occupation or on the tough moral choices required of such a life. She does create likable if somewhat clichéd protagonists. Ruby's journey from sheltered wife to confident heroine is an enjoyable one, even if the book's ending feels more than a little emotionally manipulative.