Stevie‘s review of Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey
Family Saga published by Thomas Dunne Books 26 May 15

As I’ve mentioned a few times lately, I love time-slip stories, and I’m really enjoying the rash of WWI and II stories that are coming out at the moment. Combine the two, adding in a story partly told in old letters, and you may be able to produce my perfect book, especially given that WWII is close enough to now for the characters in that story to get a second chance at what fixing what went wrong before.

In the present day (more or less), Jess runs away from the abusive boyfriend who promised her a singing career in London. She finds refuge in a house that’s been left empty for almost two years, and when the post is delivered the next day, curiosity leads her to open a letter addressed to a woman with a different name to that on most of the others. A former US airman is desperately trying to contact the woman he fell in love with while posted to the UK in the 1940s. Meanwhile Will, a probate researcher, is investigating the family history of the last known occupant of Jess’ sanctuary in the hope that her relatives will pay him commission on their claim to what could be a sizable estate.

Keen to learn more about the woman to whom the letter was sent, Jess opens a box of letters sent by Dan the airman during the war to his lover, Stella, and safeguarded by her friend, Nancy – the woman who Will is researching. Will discovers that Nancy wasn’t the owner of the house that she’d lived in until two years before her death, and his boss orders him to concentrate on more lucrative cases. However, Will is curious about both Nancy and the young girl who seems to be living in Nancy’s former home.

Nancy and Stella are orphans, whose adult lives follow very different routes after they leave the care system. Nancy works as a hairdresser and is very much a 1940s goodtime girl, while Stella marries the local vicar, after first working as his housekeeper and finds herself trapped in a loveless, abusive and unconsummated marriage. After Stella’s husband follows his best friend into the army chaplaincy, Nancy encourages her to socialise with US airmen in London, and she meets Dan. Their plans to elope are thwarted at the last minute, and Dan returns to the US alone.

Having read Dan’s letters, Jess manages to contact him and offers to look for Stella. She eventually teams up with Will and together they uncover the rest of Stella’s story and her reasons for apparently disappearing from the public records.

Throughout this book I was desperate for Jess and Will to find each other and for Stella and Dan to be reconciled, no matter how briefly (Dan has cancer so there’s never going to be a long-term happy ending). I love the way that the characters, and the friends they make along the way, all got along with each other in spite of their different backgrounds, and I was cheering for Jess and Will when they finally manage to deal with Will’s abominable family. One to buy in print and read over and over again, I suspect. Highly recommended.

Grade: A

Summary:

I promised to love you forever, in a time when I didn’t know if I’d live to see the start of another week. Now it looks like forever is finally running out. I never stopped loving you. I tried, for the sake of my own sanity, but I never even got close, and I never stopped hoping either.

Late on a frozen February evening, a young woman is running through the streets of London. Having fled from her abusive boyfriend and with nowhere to go, Jess stumbles onto a forgotten lane where a small, clearly unlived in old house offers her best chance of shelter for the night. The next morning, a mysterious letter arrives and when she can’t help but open it, she finds herself drawn inexorably into the story of two lovers from another time.

In London 1942, Stella meets Dan, a US airman, quite by accident, but there is no denying the impossible, unstoppable attraction that draws them together. Dan is a B-17 pilot flying his bomber into Europe from a British airbase; his odds of survival are one in five. In the midst of such uncertainty, the one thing they hold onto is the letters they write to each other. Fate is unkind and they are separated by decades and continents. In the present, Jess becomes determined to find out what happened to them. Her hope–inspired by a love so powerful it spans a lifetime–will lead her to find a startling redemption in her own life in this powerfully moving novel.

Read an excerpt.