Where Shadows Linger

The second installment of Intertwined Souls (after In the Blood of the Greeks) finds series protagonists Eva Muller and Zoe Lambros living in a migrant hostel in Sydney, Australia, in 1947. Eva is German and Zoe is Greek; both are emotionally scarred by the deaths of numerous loved ones during WWII. Eva is seeking work so Zoe can quit her own job and go to art school. Their erotic relationship remains stalled by Eva’s PTSD, which stems from “aversion treatments” for lesbianism that were inflicted by her stepfather’s brother. A job, an apartment, and the easy friendship of a gay coworker help to restore Eva’s confidence, but her gains are threatened when a German friend brings word that Eva’s sadistic stepfather has survived a wartime bomb and is in Australia—and once that conflict is resolved, nearly the same thing happens all over again with a different villain. Readers will be baffled by Brooks’s decision to follow one complete plot with a second. The book is effectively a standalone, since volume one is recapped exhaustively in a series of lengthy flashbacks. The characters are vital and the era appealing, but the sprawl of redundancy makes the storytelling tedious. [em](BookLife) [/em]