The National BestsellerWith war threatening to spread from Europe to England, the sleepy village of Crowmarsh Priors settles into a new sort of normal: Evacuees from London are billeted in local homes. Nightly air raids become grimly mundane. The tightening vice of rationing curtails every comfort. Men leave to fight and die. And five women forge an unlikely bond of friendship that will change their lives forever.Alice Osbourne, the stolid daughter of the late vicar, is reeling from the news that Richard Fairfax broke their engagement to marry Evangeline Fontaine, an American girl from the Deep South. Evangeline’s arrival causes a stir in the village—but not the chaos that would ensue if they knew her motives for being there. Scrappy El...
This Literary give to us some advantages, like this :
1. Unexpectedly well done
I'm still in the grip of this fascinating novel. I may just go back and read it again.
I try to avoid "romance novels", but the WWII setting and the friendship theme made me curious so I bought the book and was blown away! The author demonstrates a masterful ability to create a variety of seemingly authentic times and locations for her story. East End London slums, an old fashioned Sussex village, late '30's New Orleans at Mardi Gras time, and a city in Austria as Hitler rises to power. All these settings and the characters and situations they serve are amazingly real and convincing.
The story (or stories, there are several)is more about coping with extraordinary circumstances and the way adapting changes attitudes, actions and whole lives. The growth of the friendship between these disparate women thrown together by chance is mesmerizing to read about.
The various love stories are believable and satisfying although not at all the point of these women's lives...
2. Don't buy the Kindle version
I really enjoyed this novel but Amazon must have out-sourced the transcription of it to an ESL provider or a very bad typist for the Kindle version. There are lots of typos, duplicate words, and missing words which made it frustrating to read at times. There were actually a few sentences that were incomplete, but I could intuit the thread of the thoughts being conveyed, so I just filled in. The plot and characters are very interesting so buy the paperback or check it out at the library.
Need more appointment... ?
Good Book, Terrible Editing
I liked this book pretty well but have some negative comments.
I became engrossed in the separate stories of the women and was happy to find out what happened to them in later life, however the ending seemed like the author ran out of steam. She wrapped everything up, I guess, but left an opening for the women to find out that some people were alive who had been believed to have died, some were dead who might be alive, somewhere there was someone's child no one knew about and, oh, the bad guy was the obvious bad guy.
The editing was atrocious. I suppose for $.99 I shouldn't expect much but yikes! There were passages that were indecipherable. Even cheap books should be readable, Amazon.
More information by click here.
