"Until Leaves Fall in Paris" by Sarah Sundin

As the Nazis march toward Paris in 1940, American ballerina Lucie Girard buys her favorite English-language bookstore to allow the Jewish owners to escape. Lucie struggles to run Green Leaf Books due to oppressive German laws and harsh conditions, but she finds a way to aid the resistance by passing secret messages between the pages of her books. Widower Paul Aubrey wants nothing more than to return to the States with his little girl, but the US Army convinces him to keep his factory running and obtain military information from his German customers. As the war rages on, Paul offers his own resistance by sabotaging his product and hiding British airmen in his factory. After they meet in the bookstore, Paul and Lucie are drawn to each other, but she rejects him when she discovers he sells to the Germans. And for Paul to win her trust would mean betraying his mission.

I enjoyed learning more about Paris in early WWII; I hadn't realized what a large community of Americans there were in the city at the time, or what freedoms they retained, at least for a short while. The story gives a hint at how much messier reality was than we like to think; Paul and his German overseer are fellow graduates of Harvard, with much in common, except that they choose opposite sides. Lucie's roommates are sliding the slippery moral slope of trying to survive while making compromise after compromise in the process. Some Americans heartily buy into Nazi rhetoric, while others immediately begin secretly aiding the Allies.

I struggled to like Lucie at first, mostly because of her bohemian attitude (you can't operate a business if you're going to ignore distasteful things like finances. It just doesn't work. And being smart with finances doesn't make one a capitalistic jerk.) But I appreciated that she comes to like Paul even when she believes he is a collaborator, before learning of his true leanings, and that she never imputes her initial disgust with Paul on his daughter. Paul was wonderful. Not perfect, as he had to work to understand his grieving daughter, but a good man, doing his best to be faithful to his country, family, and employees, even at the sacrifice of his reputation.

Christy Award winner for best historical romance in 2022!

Thank you Revell and NetGalley for the complimentary e-book. I was not required to write a positive review, and all opinions are my own.