Afternoon All,

Happy Thursday. I hope you’ve all had a good week so far. It’s felt like the slowest week ever for me and I 100% blame the lovely four day weeks that we’ve had recently. I would very much like to be a four day working week person, imagine all of the reading I could get through.

Book 📖

Thank you to @0neMoreChapter_ and @P_Adrian_Writer for this advanced audio copy of The Bletchley Women in return for an honest review. The Bletchley Women was published on 29th April 2022 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Evie Milton was destined to marry an aristocrat, and live on a fine English estate, just like her mother.

Rose Wiley was destined to marry her David and raise a brood of children on farming land, just like her mother.

But destiny has other plans for these women. Both Evie and Rose are hired at Bletchley park to decode intercepted Luftwaffe messages, providing a vital service to the war efforts. Performing their jobs proves to the women that they are not their mothers and they don’t have to settle for the cards that they have been dealt.

General Thoughts 🤔

This is a bit of an outlier when pitched amongst my usual reads but it was exactly that which made me want to read it. I very rarely read any historical fiction so I thought why not give it a try and I’m so glad that I did. The Bletchley Women was such a heart warming story about friendships, personal growth and sacrifice. I have seen a number of novels recently about Bletchley but I feel happy with having chosen this particular one to read.

The story was gripping and I have to say that I was a little bit disappointed when it ended. Not because of any huge twists or big reveals, I just really enjoyed reading about this group of characters. They were very easy to like and once I started the book, I was invested in their success and happiness.

Characters 👫👭👬

The characters were exactly what made this book enjoyable to read. I really liked Evie and Rose as well as the more sideline characters like Lucy and Nell. These women would likely never have met each other, never mind ended up being friends but the war brought them together and together they were determined to do all that they could to help. I think that they were all brave women and I commended them for going against their friends and families in order to do the right thing and also to create their own happiness.

Writing Style ✍️

The reason I don’t tend to read a lot of historical fiction is because the little that I have read has failed to engage me or make me feel engrossed in the story. Patricia Adrian managed to create a story that I found both interesting and pleasant to read so she definitely gets a tick from me. She created likeable characters that I was able to get behind and want the best for and don’t we all want to find characters we can see succeed?

I liked the way that the story was told from both Evie and Rose’s perspective. It highlighted to me how different their backgrounds were but how similar they were as women. The narration for the two women was also done brilliantly, the narrators truly brought them to life.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

I’m very happy that I decided to go for something different to my usual. This book was lovely to listen to and I enjoyed following the women on their own personal journeys and seeing their friendships grow. This author has made me realise that I should jump out of my comfort zone more as who knows what books I’m missing out on.

😍😍😍😩😩