ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Adam and Eve by Jeffrey Archer

Adam and Eve by Jeffrey Archer is published by Harper Collins and is available now. My thanks to the publishers for the proof copy.

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THE ULTIMATE TALE OF COURAGE AND SACRIFICE FROM THE MASTER STORYTELLER

November 11th, 1918. As the guns of the Great War fall silent, two babies draw their first breath.

Eve is the daughter of an Earl. Adam, a shepherd’s son. Yet from their first meeting they form an extraordinary bond that neither privilege nor prejudice can break.

Then on a single September night in 1940, as Hitler prepares to invade the British Isles, their actions will change his mind. Determining not just their own futures but the fate of a nation.

They will show extraordinary courage. They will make unimaginable sacrifices. And the story of what they did will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

From the broads of Norfolk to the beaches of Dunkirk, Adam & Eve is a breathtaking epic of courage, sacrifice, and love forged in Britain’s darkest hour.

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I was thrilled to bits when I heard about Adam and Eve, a book that was already planned to be Jeffrey Archer’s final book and which sadly ended up being published the day after he died. Kane and Abel, which I read many years ago, has a kind of elevated status in my memories due to how brilliant it is and Adam and Eve seemed like a return to the same kind of storyline.

Adam and Eve are born on the same day, the day of the Armistice in 1918. That’s where the similarities end as Adam is a shepherd’s son and Eve is the daughter of an Earl, on whose estate Adam’s parents work. Nevertheless, the pair are brought up together and they become close. Much of the book is about their different paths through life and their relationship to each other, until WWII breaks out and then it becomes a story of espionage and derring-do.

I’m torn on my feelings about this book. On the one hand, it romps along at a fine pace and it’s very readable, but on the other hand, it did feel quite cliched at times and I had a number of ‘oh come on’ moments when I just didn’t believe that the characters, particularly an Earl and a Dowager Countess in the 1920s and 30s, would have behaved in the way they did.

There’s no doubting that Archer wrote a ripping yarn with this book and what an amazing legacy of a back catalogue he has left behind. Adam and Eve didn’t completely hit the spot for me but it’s still a twist-a-minute action-packed tale from a master storyteller.

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Jeffrey Archer, whose novels include the Clifton Chronicles, the William Warwick novels and Kane and Abel, has topped bestseller lists around the world, with sales of over 300 million copies. He is the only author ever to have been a #1 bestseller in fiction, short stories and non-fiction (The Prison Diaries). A member of the House of Lords for over a quarter of a century, the author was married to Dame Mary Archer, and they have two sons, two granddaughters and three grandsons.