Stevie‘s review of The Light Over London by Julia Kelly
Contemporary Romance and Historical Fiction published by Gallery Books 08 Jan 19
I’ve been enjoying Julia Kelly’s The Matchmaker of Edinburgh series, so I thought it would be a fun diversion to read one of her stories from a different era, while waiting to see if we’re going to get any more Victorian stories. In fact, this book slips neatly back and forth between the 1940s and the present, as we follow the lives of two women linked by an old diary, the one who wrote about her life and the one who finds the book during a house clearance and is intrigued enough by what she reads to dig further into the untold parts of the story she’s begun to uncover.
Cara Hargraves moves back to the town where she attended university, and that was her grandmother’s home for many years, in the aftermath of a bitter divorce. Previously an events planner, she takes up a job with the antique dealer she worked for as a student – on her grandmother’s recommendation – and begins to relearn the trade, as well as the art of discovering the important details that mark out each piece her employer buys and sells. While looking around the collection of a recently deceased widow, Cara comes across an old diary and some photographs, which don’t appear to have any direct link to the woman who owned them. Intrigued, Cara persuades her boss and their client to let her read the diary and hopefully reunite it with its owner or her descendants.
The diary, we learn, was written by Louise, a young woman living and working in a small village close to an airbase in the early years of the Second World War. Persuaded by her more adventurous cousin to sneak out to a dance, Louise meets a dashing RAF officer, who asks if he can call on her on his next free day. Although Louise is expected by her mother to marry a local boy, she quickly agrees to his request, and they begin seeing each other in secret. Nothing in a village can remain hidden for long, however, and Louise is soon challenged by both her mother and the mother of the man the older women believe her to be almost engaged to. Louise fears that she will never see the world beyond her village and so runs to her cousin. The two join up for war service. At the end of basic training, Louise is chosen to serve as one of the first women to operate an anti-aircraft gun. Meanwhile, she is still exchanging letters with her RAF pilot.
Intrigued by the diary, and the abrupt way it comes to an end partway through Louise’s time in the gunnery team, Cara asks her new neighbour, a history lecturer at her old university, if he can help her research what happened next. Cara’s curiosity also prompts her to push her grandmother to reveal the story behind a row with Cara’s mother that occurred shortly before Cara’s parents died in a car accident.
I enjoyed this book a lot. Both Cara and Louise were engaging characters that I really wanted to find their respective happy endings, and while Louise’s wartime love story ended as unhappily as the diary’s breaking off implies, Cara continues to dig and eventually learns of Louise’s post-war adventures, as well as the events that led to the diary being hidden where she found it. Although there were a couple of jarring inconsistencies for me as a UK reader, I’d certainly read more UK-set contemporary or recent-historical stories by the author, as well as looking forward to her next Victorian book.
Grade: B
Summary:
It’s always been easier for Cara Hargraves to bury herself in the past than confront the present, which is why working with a gruff but brilliant antiques dealer is perfect. While clearing out an estate, she pries open an old tin that holds the relics of a lost relationship: among the treasures, a World War II-era diary and a photograph of a young woman in uniform. Eager to find the author of the hauntingly beautiful, unfinished diary, Cara digs into this soldier’s life, but soon realizes she may not have been ready for the stark reality of wartime London she finds within the pages.
In 1941, nineteen-year-old Louise Keene’s life had been decided for her—she’ll wait at home in her Cornish village until her wealthy suitor returns from war to ask for her hand. But when Louise unexpectedly meets Flight Lieutenant Paul Bolton, a dashing RAF pilot stationed at a local base, everything changes. And changes again when Paul’s unit is deployed without warning.
Desperate for a larger life, Louise joins the women’s branch of the British Army in the anti-aircraft gun unit as a Gunner Girl. As bombs fall on London, she and the other Gunner Girls relish in their duties to be exact in their calculations, and quick in their identification of enemy planes during air raids. The only thing that gets Louise through those dark, bullet-filled nights is knowing she and Paul will be together when the war is over. But when a bundle of her letters to him are returned unanswered, she learns that wartime romance can have a much darker side.
Illuminating the story of these two women separated by generations and experience, Julia Kelly transports us to World War II London in this heartbreakingly beautiful novel through forgotten antique treasures, remembered triumphs, and fierce family ties.
Read an excerpt.
