Have you ever read a book that you just could not tell if you actually enjoyed it or not? That was this book. It wasn’t poorly written, but it wasn’t ‘smack me in the face’ amazing, so I’m still not ver sure of how it left me.
This is Jennifer Ryan’s debut novel, and it follows the women of Chilbury during World War II, and follows the age old adage that “life goes on”. There’s romance, heartbreak, coming of age, and even death. I do think the synopsis is a bit heavy handed on the concept of the choir as it really only plays a background role to all of the other plots floating around.
For a rather short book, there is A LOT going on in this story; we get baby swapping in the first 50 pages. Because of it’s length and everything going on, a lot of the storylines develop quickly and almost at an unnatural pace. And even with all this action, the story doesn’t even really start to move forward until the last half of the book. Prior to that everything is simply moving in circles. I liken it to those battle scenes in action movies where there is a lot going on, but nothing is actually progressing the plot. All action, no movement.
The biggest thing at that made me question my enjoyment of this book was it’s written entirely as letters and diary entries from three characters. Which is all well and good, except that I have never in my life read a letter or diary entry that was written as if each character just happened to be a fiction writer on the side. The joy of fiction is that it’s believable. I find it hard to believe that someone would write a letter or diary entry as narratively as these characters have. I feel the story would work better simply as an alternating point of view narrative than attempting to make each chapter a written product from one of the woman. It makes it infinitely less believable when a letter from one of the characters quotes an entire conversation with emotional analysis, there was too much detail to make it a believable letter one sends to another.
The characters are all diverse, but fairly one dimensional; a grieving war mother, two sisters that struggle to get along, a pleasant and supportive choir director, a mean old vicar. All pretty standard tropes one finds in a small village in war stricken England. And with all the drama going on in the book, everything once again conveniently wraps up with a nice bow. Everyone gets the ending you hope and wish for them. This novel is anything but out of the ordinary. It’s simple, straight forward, and predictable.
I gave it three stars because of my so-so feelings towards the characters and this book in general. I’m sure others who enjoy nice, simple historical fiction with a bit of drama would eat this book up. It just was not my cup of tea. One day I’m going to find a historical fiction novel that doesn’t leave me feeling “meh”.
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