Book Spotlight: The Last Lifeboat

Though I’ve only read two of Hazel Gaynor‘s books so far, I loved both and am always looking out for more from her. Today, she releases her latest solo novel, The Last Lifeboat, set in England in 1940. As Germans threaten to invade, a teacher bravely evacuates her children. This novel, inspired by a true story, follows both the teacher and a mother whose children are part of that evacuation.

I don’t often read WWII stories anymore, but amidst the many books about it, some stand out above the rest. The Last Lifeboat is one of those, highlighting real people in a story of brave civilians and children. Of all the atrocities of war, its effects on kids may be the worst. Hazel Gaynor is an incredible writer, at once compassionate and empowering. Her novelization of this true story is one that’s sure to reach readers’ hearts.

Find out more about The Last Lifeboat below, and let me know if you’re planning to pick it up. If you’ve already read it, let me know how you liked it in the comments! I’m hoping to read this book soon, so stay tuned for my review.

Official Summary

A Most Anticipated Book by Real Simple ∙ SheReads ∙ BookBub ∙ and more!

Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters, in a moving and triumphant new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.

1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring—she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher—to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas.

1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away.

When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other—one on land, the other at sea—will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.

Get the Book

You can buy The Last Lifeboat here – it’s available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

The Last Lifeboat by Author
Audience	Adult
Genre	Historical Fiction; Women’s Fiction
Setting	England
Number of Pages	384
Original Publication Date	June 13, 2023

About the Author

Hazel Gaynor is an award-winning, New York Times, USA Today, Irish Times, and international bestselling author. Her most recent historical novel, set in China during WWII—published in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand as The Bird in the Bamboo Cage and in the USA and Canada as When We Were Young & Brave—was an Irish Times bestseller, a national bestseller in the USA, and was short-listed for the 2020 Irish Book Awards.