A review by makennaknighton
All Is Fair by Dee Garretson

3.0

Garretson's All Is Fair follows Lady Thomasina Tretheway, nicknamed Mina, the determined young Englishwoman who uses her connections and code-breaking abilities to secure herself a place in the war effort during the Great War. This book had such a promising concept but ultimately it failed to live up to my expectations, mainly because the characters were too flat and predictable. Mina's family friend Lord Andrew Graham feels like a caricatured strong and silent type, and Mina's love interest Lucas Miller is the stereotypical fun-loving American boy, with the attempts at giving him depth feeling contrived and unconvincing. The twists throughout the narrative, such as the revelation of Lucas' parentage or the existence of Mina's nephew, are not enough to counteract the fact that each of the people in the book make little progression in their characters. Even Mina's character is somewhat underdeveloped; for example, though she insisted and dwelled on the fact that she was not a good actress and so would not be a good choice for the lead role in a play at her family's manor, later Mina expertly pretends to be pregnant to deter the suspicion of the German soldier, causing Lucas to say with admiration, "I might have believed you if I hadn't known better. You're a good actress" (220). Though a surface-level success at an entertaining glimpse into an experience of World War I, All is Fair did not fully live up to its potential, at least in my reading.