Tag: wartime fiction

historical, series

Series I love: Emmy Lake

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This week’s series post was an easy choice because the third Emmy Lake Book came out in the UK yesterday (it’s not out in the US until August) and I’ve read it and it’s good. It’s also a long time since I’ve written about a historical series that’s *not* a murder mystery one so it’s also a nice dash of variety for you all!

When we meet Emmy Lake at the start of the series, it is 1940 and she is applying for a job at the London Evening Chronicle and dreaming of being a Lady War Reporter. But what she actually gets is a job working for a women’s magazine, as secretary to their Agony Aunt. Mrs Bird doesn’t want any “Unpleasantness” included in the column, But as Emmy reads the letters coming in, she realises that some people need actual help with real problems, and takes matters into her own hands. The sequel, Yours Cheerfully, was a BotW when it came out back in 2021, and now we have a third. I’ve puzzled about how much of the plots of each of the sequels to talk about – because obviously there are spoilers a plenty here. I said you didn’t need to have read Dear Mrs Bird to enjoy Yours Cheerfully, and the same is true of Mrs Porter Calling, but as this is a Series I Love post, I’m encouraging you to read all of them and I don’t want to give too much away.

What I’ve decided that I can say is that the first book shows Emmy finding her feet in the world of magazines, the second shows her getting involved in the war effort, and the third has a threat to the future of the magazine that she loves. And then there is Emmy’s private life, which runs through all three books – her best friend Bunty, some romance, and then obviously living in London during the Second World War. Emmy has a can-do attitude and is very cheerful, which makes her a fun character to follow around – at the start of the series she’s quite sheltered – or at least not very worldly, but obviously that’s evolved as she’s seen more of life. As you know, I’m a Girl’s Own reader – and I’d say she’s a bit like one of the school girls from those series grown up and let lose on the world. It is a book set in the war, so it is inevitable that sad and bad things happen in this – but if you’ve read a few books set in London in the Second World War you can see what’s going to happen in the first book coming* so you’re slightly forewarned.

By the end of the new book, we’ve reached the start of 1944 so I’m hoping that means we have another book to come, because there are still some questions unanswered, but as it’s taken at least two years between books so far, I’m resigning myself to not getting any answers until 2025 at the earliest! My copy of Mrs Porter Calling came from NetGalley, but I think you should be able to find it fairly easily in the bookstores – I’ve seen Yours Cheerfully on the shelves in the last few weeks ahead of this one coming out too – and of course they’re all also in Kindle and Kobo. And if you’re a Kindle Unlimited member, the first book is in KU at the moment as well.

Have a great weekend everyone!

*Slight spoilers: This book may have been the origin of my unofficial Cafe de Paris rule. If you know, you know. I’ve tried to write a post about it the idea, but it would be full of spoilers. So full of spoilers…

Book of the Week, fiction, historical, new releases

Book of the Week: Yours Cheerfully

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As I said yesterday, plenty that I want to write about from last week’s reading, so it was hard to pick what to write about today. But in the end I went with Yours Cheerfully by A J Pearce because it made me smile and it’s been a while since I wrote about some historical fiction. On top of that it came out last week so I’m being timely *and*’my paperback copy of V for Victory turned up the other day – just to remind me how much I like books like this when they are done well. And this one is done well and has a pretty cover. What’s not to like.

Yours Cheerfully is the sequel to Dear Mrs Bird, which I reviewed in a summer reading round up a couple of years back – after reading it on a sun lounger in Gran Canaria. Those were the days. You don’t need to have read the first book to enjoy Yours Cheerfully, but if you have you will get a little more out of it, purely because you know the characters better, not because you’re missing chunks of plot or backstory. We rejoin Emmy as she is finding her feet as the new advice columnist at Women’s Friend. The war is in full swing and the magazine is soon asked to take part in a Ministry of Information campaign to recruit more women workers for the war effort. Emmy is excited to step up and help, but soon she is finding out that there are a lot of challenges for war workers – and she wants to try and help her new friends.

Where Dear Mrs Bird focused very much on Emmy’s own problems at work to create the drama and tension, swapping that for Emmy’s dilemma about helping the women in the munitions factory works well – if you’ve read the first book you can see Emmy’s growing confidence in her role at the magazine and her journalistic ambitions. A more obvious option would have been to focus on Emmy’s relationship and whether her sweetheart would be sent abroad to fight but even aside from my dislike of splitting couples up in sequels purely for the drama, this works much better – and the knowledge of the worries of the women at the factory heightens your sense of the stakes for Emmy as well as providing context for the wider peril of the war – because it could all have been a little cozy and felt a bit low stakes – despite the war. That’s not to say this is a gritty depressing read – because it’s not -it’s charming and the magazine world is lovely – but it’s not saccharine or unbearably rose tinted. Like the first book this ends a bit unexpectedly and in a bit of a rush but I really enjoyed spending time with Emmy and Bunty and Charles and seeing what was happening at the magazine. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a third to come. I’m certainly hoping there is!

My copy of Yours Cheerfully came via NetGalley, but as I mentioned to the top it’s out now in Kindle and Kobo as well as in hardback. I saw Dear Mrs Bird in quite a lot of shops when that came out, so I’m hoping this will be the same. Judging by the fact that Foyles have it in stock for click and collect at a bunch of their locations, I’m optimistic on that front.

Happy Reading!