Review: Daughters of the Night Sky by Aimie K. Runyan

As soon as I heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. Female pilots in the Red Army during WWII - that sort of satisfies everything I love in a book: strong women, Russian history, WWII setting.

For the most part, I loved this book. It drew me in immediately. The story is about a pilot, Katya, who was training to be a pilot before the war started. She then joins the Red Army and is part of group of women who became known by the Germans as "Night Witches" because they bombed German camps at night. I know nothing about piloting or navigating planes, but felt this story described the process well enough that I understood what was happening, without feeling overwhelmed with details.

One aspect of the book that I especially enjoyed was seeing how women were treated and how they handled finding themselves in what had previously been considered men's roles. Despite Stalin's support, they still had to deal with men not comfortable with seeing women being treated as equals. These were complex characters, with families and fears and ambitions, as well as insurmountable courage.

The action scenes are well written and exciting. Every time I picked this book up, I had a tough time putting it down. I was reading in the morning before work and during my lunch breaks, always dreading having to put the book away.

I read the entire last half in one sitting. And I continued to love the book, heartbreaking though parts of it were, up until near the end. As the story was progressing, the war was ending, and I was feeling hopeful for these characters, even after all the losses they'd suffered, and then something happened that upset me, that seemed unnecessary. I'm being vague because I don't want to spoil it for other readers - because even though I didn't like what happened, you all need to read this book.

Because this was based on true events, I thought at first that maybe the author had based this character on a real person so the author had no choice. But the author's note said the characters were fictional, and that she took liberties with the end, which was supposed to be a happy ending of sorts, but annoyed me. Sometimes, I think authors do things like this because they think it makes the story more serious or edgy. I don't know, maybe I just read too many books that have guaranteed happy endings. And as I said, this does have a happy ending, but not the one I had hoped for. The fact that I'm still so upset about this, two days after finishing the book, shows how well-developed these characters and this story was. I loved these characters and my heart is broken for them. I may as well admit, I cried through the last few chapters of this book, I felt that attached to this story. 

Anyway, I think this is a really great book. I highly recommend it if you are interested in stories set during WWII, and/or stories about interesting, strong women.

I received a copy of this via Netgalley.