December 1941. War has erupted in the Pacific, spelling danger for Gina Capelli Thorpe, an American expat living in Manila. When the Japanese invade and her husband goes missing, Gina flees with her daughter to the Zambales Mountains to avoid capture-or worse.
Desperate for money, medicine, and guns, the resistance recruits Gina to join their underground army and smuggles her back to Manila. There, she forges a new identity and opens a nightclub, where seductive beauties sing, dance, and tease secrets out of high-ranking Japanese officers while the wildly successful club and its enemy patrons help fund the resistance.
But operating undercover in the spotlight has Gina struggling to stay a step ahead of the Japanese. She's risked everything to take a stand, but her club is a house of cards in the eye of a storm. Can Gina keep this delicate operation running long enough to outlast the enemy, or is she on a sure path to defeat that will put her family, her freedom, or even her life at risk?
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[A tinny squawk from a loudspeaker woke Gina]***
(Lake Union Publishing, 1 July 2019, ebook, 393 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle, Amazon First Reads)
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I don't often read fiction about WWII so this book was well outside my comfort zone. I thoroughly enjoyed it. This offers a different story about WWII. Gina is a great character and completely changes through the course of the book. When the book opens she lives a privileged life with cooks, maid and nannies. The Japanese occupation of Manila (the Philippines) turns her world upside down and she learns to survive on almost nothing. The book is brutal and chilling at times as the harsh reality of life under Japanese occupation becomes all too clear.
