Next to Love is a historical romance that follows the lives of three girlfriends from 1941 to 1964. It's easy to read, and I think anyone who enjoys the genre will probably like this book. The drama of families coping with war wounds is still timely and relevant. I think many military wives/girlfriends understand the struggles and fears embodied by the main characters.

The prologue is great. I'd hoped the rest of the book would've had the same tension and mystique, but it gets taken over by romance. I didn't connect to any of the characters until almost halfway through the book; they're defined by their husbands/boyfriends so their development was lacking (less so with Babe but definitely the case for Grace and Millie). The novel follows the three synchronous romances without much development in the way of the women's friendships. They didn't strike me as best friends since kindergarten as it's mentioned they are. Their interactions seem little more than neighborly for the 40's or 50's. A minor gripe but I kept asking myself, "How/why are there women friends?"

Once WWII comes to a close, characterization improves. I enjoyed the different aspects of post-war life conveyed by the three different women. But they should've been the only point-of-view characters. Halfway through the book, minor characters are getting their own scenes. There are also a number of point-of-view inconsistencies, stemming from the fact that the book simply has too many points of view. The story lost its focus, and I didn't know who the important characters were anymore.

Apart from Babe's early storyline, the novel itself was rather blah. From 1952 to the end, the effect of the war has deteriorated and so has what made the first half of the book interesting. I didn't feel enough immersiveness in the era the book is set in for a historical novel. There's really no plot, the reader just follows these women's sometimes turbulent lives. The novel covers too wide a time period; I thought there'd be more focus on WWII based on the back cover blurb, but that's really only the first half of the book. The ending was predictable, though the story almost petered out before getting to it.

A fast read and an interesting premise, I just could not get into it. Too mundane, too much of a romance, and just not very well-written.