I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Purple Hearts by Michael Grant
Series: Front Lines #3
Published by Katherine Tegen Books on 1/30/18
Genres: Historical, War, Young Adult
Pages: 576
Format: Hardcover
Source: Reviewer Purchase
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Courage, sacrifice, and fear have lead Rio, Frangie, and Rainy through front-line battles in North Africa and Sicily, and their missions are not over. These soldiers and thousands of Allies must fight their deadliest battle yet—for their country and their lives—as they descend into the freezing water and onto the treacherous sands of Omaha Beach. It is June 6, 1944. D-Day has arrived.

No longer naive recruits, these soldier girls are now Silver Star recipients and battle-hardened. Others look to them for guidance and confidence, but this is a war that will leave sixty million dead. Flesh will turn to charcoal. Piles will be made of torn limbs. The women must find a way to lead while holding on to their own last shreds of belief in humanity.

Short and Sweet

In this final installment of the Front Lines series, Rainy, Rio, and Frangie, are fighting for their country and the strength to get through the war while remaining sane and keeping their hope in humanity. D-Day arrives and the girls still have a lot left to fight for if they’re going to make it out of this war alive, they’ll be crossing enemy lines and trying to survive.

Characters

Rio: Rio has moved up in ranks and is now a sergeant. In this book Rio struggles with having to keep her platoon alive. Rio is such a strong character and so are all of the other female leads in this series. Rio calls things how she sees them and she’s grown so much through the series and you can tell. I like the fact that she knows that even though she’s a girl and most men won’t take her seriously that she’s still just as powerful as them if not more.

Rainy: Rainy is smart and she always has been. I like Rainy a lot, in this book she’s tasked with finding out where the enemy is going and reporting back to the Army with this information. Rainy has to deal with a traitor and she sees some things that disturb her while on this mission.

Frangie: Frangie our medic. I feel like Frangie has it the worst, even though she’s just a medic and isn’t fighting she sees a lot of the aftermath of the war. She has to tend to soldiers with extreme injuries and she has to go on everyday seeing people die or soldiers intentionally trying to hurt themselves to get out of the war. Frangie does the best that she can and I think she’s great she puts so much effort into helping the soldiers and she has a natural caring nature about her.

Romance

Rio and Strand: This two have been sweethearts before they even got enlisted. I really liked these two together and I was kind of sad to see it fall apart just because Strand was embarrassed by how much better Rio was at being a soldier than he was.

Rio and Jack: Jack is one of the soldiers in Rio’s group and in Silver Stars the two shared a kiss and in this book we can see that they still care about each other.

Frangie and Walter: Walter is a soldier that Frangie sees from time to time. I think these two are really sweet together whenever I read scenes with them I can’t help but to smile.

Final Thoughts

Theres just so much to say about this book. This whole series was amazing the accuracy about things that occurred during WW2 and Grant just captured that beautifully in his writing. Like I said before all of the female leads are such strong women and are determined to fight for their country, I loved getting to read about each of them and follow them on their journeys. I feel like the background characters were great too, especially Jenou I love that she and Rio got to go into this as best friends and it stayed that way throughout the series. This is one of my favorite series and I’m so glad that I read it and I will always recommend this series to friends, so check out the Front Lines trilogy!