War Brides Author: Helen Bryan | Language: English | ISBN:
B007BSG026 | Format: PDF
War Brides Description
The National Bestseller
With 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 Elsie Pigeon is among the poor of London who see the evacuations as a chance to escape a life of destitution. Another new arrival is Tanni Zayman, a young Jewish girl who fled the horrors of Europe and now waits with her newborn son, certain that the rest of her family is safe and bound to show up any day. And then there’s Frances Falconleigh, a madcap, fearless debutante whose father is determined to keep her in the countryside and out of the papers.
As the war and its relentless hardships intensify around them, the same struggles that threaten to rip apart their lives also bring the five closer together. They draw strength from one another to defeat formidable enemies—hunger, falling bombs, the looming threat of a Nazi invasion, and a traitor in their midst—and find remarkable strength within themselves to help their friends. Theirs is a war-forged loyalty that will outlast the fiercest battle and endure years and distance.
When four of the women return to Crowmarsh Priors for a VE Day celebration fifty years later, television cameras focus on the heartwarming story of these old women as war brides of a bygone age, but miss the more newsworthy angle. The women’s mission is not to commemorate or remember—they’ve returned to settle a score and avenge one of their own.
- File Size: 1459 KB
- Print Length: 497 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1612183328
- Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (June 12, 2012)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B007BSG026
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #213 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Sagas - #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Romance - #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Literary
- #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Sagas - #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Romance - #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Literary
I reached about the 25% mark on this book thinking that if only the author had employed a good editor, this book could be fantastic. Imagine my surprise when I got to the end and found out it's an Amazon Encore book. Really? This is "exceptional"?
Considering the ponderous structure, overabundance of insignificant characters, unnecessary sidetracks, and the amateurish POV failures, this is hardly exceptional.
It has great potential. I kept reading because I wanted to know what happened. I suppose the only character I wholeheartedly rooted for was Tanni. The rest were either too shallow, annoying, or questionable to care much about. I plowed through to the end wishing I was enjoying it more.
The author does a good job of setting the scene and painting descriptions. However, the pace is ruined by constant POV switches within the scenes. It's as if your whole house was divided into small sections with clear, foot-high barriers. Not noticeable at a glance, easily stepped over, but continually stubbing your toe and then having to lift your feet high to simply walk through the house gets more and more annoying. And tiring. Just as constantly having to shift mental gears when the next character's thoughts intrude is tiring. This is the sort of thing an editor should point out and correct. I can only assume that a total re-write was too much work and they wanted to cash in on brisk sales.
Ponderous structure: Starting everything out in 1995 in a prologue and introducing us haphazardly to numerous elderly characters does this book a disservice. The here-and-there approach was confusing. The book didn't really need to start until Chapter 1.
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