The Morning GIft by Eva Ibbotson

20 year old Ruth Berger is left behind to brave the Nazis when her plans to escape Vienna and meet up with her Jewish family and fiancée go wrong. Luckily for her, an old family friend, a professor at the college where her father taught, comes to her aid. They come up with the idea to wed, move to Great Britain to get her out of Nazi territory then have their marriage annulled so she can then go to her family and fiancée. However, this story is a romance so things cannot be as simple as that! Of course, Ruth and her rescuer (I don’t want to give his identity away) become attracted to each other. They also have trouble getting their marriage annulled. Complicating matters is that Ruth becomes his student when she enrolls in college in England. There are plenty of obstacles in Ruth's path, and it is never quite clear until the end just who Ruth will end up spending her life with- or even what she wants.

This book has a slow start (it begins when Ruth is a little girl and goes into her family’s background), but it is well worth sticking with. You’ll be into it by the third chapter, I promise! The story never gets too dark in spite of the serious time in which it is set. Ibbotson is excellent at getting her readers emotionally involved into her stories and you will find yourself rooting for the protagonists and wanting to boo at the antagonist, a very annoying student at Ruth's college. This book is both light enough to be a summer read and meaty enough to satisfy readers looking for something to bite into and think about.

Book; 14+; ISBN 978-0142409114; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993