Tag: Reading Challenges

#BlogTour #BookReview Love in a Time of War by Adrienne Chinn @rararesources @OneMoreChapter_

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Love In A Time of WarWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Love in a Time of War by Adrienne Chinn which is published on 3rd March. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and to One More Chapter for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the post by my tour buddies for today, The Page Ladies.

Love in a Time of War final revisedAbout the Book

Three sisters
The Great War
The end of innocence…

In 1913, in a quiet corner of London, the three Fry sisters are coming of age, dreaming of all the possibilities the bright future offers. But when war erupts their innocence is shattered and a new era of uncertainty begins.

Cecelia loves Max but his soldier’s uniform is German, not British, and suddenly the one man she loves is the one man she can’t have.

Jessie enlists in the army as a nurse and finally finds the adventure she’s craved when she’s sent to Gallipoli and Egypt, but it comes with an unimaginable cost.

Etta elopes to Capri with her Italian love, Carlo, but though her growing bump is real, her marriage certificate is a lie.

As the three sisters embark on journeys they never could have imagined, their mother Christina worries about the harsh new realities they face, and what their exposure to the wider world means for the secrets she’s been keeping…

Format: Paperback (480 pages)     Publisher: One More Chapter
Publication date: 3rd March 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Love in a Time of War (The Three Fry Sisters #1) on Goodreads

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My Review

I was first introduced to the writing of Adrienne Chinn when I read The English Wife in 2020 and I remarked then on the author’s ability to enable the reader to navigate multiple timelines. Love in a Time of War is a little more straightforward, moving between events in the years 1913 to 1919, with occasional trips back to the 1890s.

Love in a Time of War is the first book in a trilogy featuring the Fry sisters – Cecilia (Celie) and non-identical twins, Jessica (Jessie) and Etta – and their mother, Christina. The author has created distinct personalities for the three sisters. Celie, the eldest, is clear-headed, thoughtful and has a strong sense of justice particularly when it comes to the question of women’s suffrage.  Etta is more headstrong, fired up by the desire to become an artist and willingly immersing herself in a bohemian lifestyle.  Jessie is the most serious of the sisters, determined to put her nursing skills to use and resist the pressure to follow the conventional path of marriage and motherhood.

The latter is the path their mother Christina is determined they should follow.  She appears almost puritanical in that respect, indeed one might say hyprocritical given what the reader learns about her early life.  Being more generous, perhaps her actions are driven by a genuine desire to prevent her daughters making the same unwise decisions that she did in allowing her heart to rule her head. Whatever her motivation, it seems to have the opposite effect to that she intended as both Celie and Etta become involved in relationships with men who do not make ideal husband material in the eyes of Christina. Even Jessie, who was my favourite character, eventually embarks on a relationship with a man who for many reasons would probably not be welcomed with open arms in the Fry household. (I’d have welcomed him in any day!)

A character I’ve not mentioned so far is the sisters’ father, Gerald. He was the character with whom I empathised the most. Having done his best to provide a stable home for his daughters, encourage their interests and be a devoted husband, I was intensely moved by his discovery that all is not what it seems in his marriage. In keeping secrets from her family, I was reminded of the quotation from Marmion by Sir Walter Scott, ‘O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.’

Although the First World War provides the backdrop to many of the events in the book and transports the reader to a number of locations including Italy and Egypt, another constant element is the campaign for women’s suffrage.  All three sisters reflect the ideals of the movement, albeit in different ways. Celie’s is the most obvious, becoming involved in organising marches for Millicent Fawcett’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and, later, writing newspaper articles and taking photographs to publicise the vital contribution of women to the war effort, such as those working in munitions factories.  Etta’s unconventional lifestyle is a challenge to social conventions that sees her hobnobbing with leading lights in the Bloomsbury Group such as artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and writer Virginia Woolf.  Jessica’s determination to forge her own path in life and be judged on her ability rather than her gender, represents the independence that many women were fighting for.

Those who love the idea of chance encounters will be rewarded by some coincidences that conjure up that famous line from the film Casablanca, ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world she walks into mine’. Indeed at one point, when a family connection is discovered between two strangers, one of them remarks, ‘Small world, isn’t it?’. Quite.  However these encounters are pivotal to the storyline, on occasions in quite deadly ways. They also serve to demonstrate that, in war, soldiers on both sides experience the same level of fear and anxiety and face the same moral dilemmas.

As might be expected from the first instalment in a trilogy, Love in a Time of War ends at significant moments in the lives of the sisters. With the war finally ended, what new horizons await them? There will be plenty of readers eager to find out.

In three words: Romantic, dramatic, expansive

Try something similar: Daughters of War by Dinah Jeffries

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Love In a Time of War - Adrienne_Chinn_24_6_21_210lo_res_OnlineAbout the Author

Adrienne Chinn was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, grew up in Quebec, and eventually made her way to London, England after a career as a journalist. In England she worked as a TV and film researcher before embarking on a career as an interior designer, lecturer, and writer. When not up a ladder or at the computer writing, she often can be found rummaging through flea markets or haggling in the Marrakech souk.

Her second novel, The English Wife – a timeslip story set in World War II England and contemporary Newfoundland – was published in June 2020 and has become an international bestseller. Her debut novel, The Lost Letter from Morocco, was published by Avon Books UK in 2019. Her latest novel, Love in a Time of War, set during WWI, is the first in a series of three books based around the changing lives of three English sisters and their half-Italian mother, with a timeslip to 1890s Capri and London.

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#BookReview The Reading Party by Fenella Gentleman @MuswellPress

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The Reading PartyAbout the Book

It is the 1970s and Oxford’s male institutions are finally opening their doors to women…

Sarah Addleshaw – young, spirited and keen to prove her worth – begins term as the first female academic at her college. She is, in fact, its only female ‘Fellow’.

Impulsive love affairs – with people, places and the ideas in her head – beset Sarah throughout her first exhilarating year as a don, but it is the Reading Party that has the most dramatic impact.

Asked to accompany the first mixed group of students on the annual college trip to Cornwall, Sarah finds herself illicitly drawn to the suave American Tyler. Torn between professional integrity and personal feelings, she faces her biggest challenge yet.

Format: Paperback (352 pages)    Publisher: Muswell Press
Publication date: 14th June 2018 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find The Reading Party on Goodreads

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My Review

I hosted a guest post by Fenella as part of the blog tour when The Reading Party was first published and having said at the time I was looking forward to reading it I’m disappointed (and a little ashamed) it’s taken me so long to pick up my copy.

I was at university in the late 1970s but one which had never been single sex and where the academic staff included plenty of women, so the situation Sarah Addleshaw finds herself in when she arrives at her Oxford college was not one I recognised.  Oxford has its own rather individual customs and vocabulary so the glossary at the back of the book will prove useful for those who’ve not come across them before. Having watched plenty of episodes of Inspector Morse I was familiar with some of them.

Although Sarah’s appointment as the college’s first female Fellow might seem like reason for celebration, she suffers from a degree of ‘imposter syndrome’ fearing that if she is unable to achieve what is expected of her it will demonstrate that the ‘experiment’ of admitting women to the college has been a failure. She certainly encounters some rather outdated views about women from her male colleagues. (Interestingly Sarah’s male academic colleagues are often referred to by their specialisms, such as ‘the Medievalist’, rather than by name.)

Sarah’s diffidence and constant worry about what others will think of her made it a little difficult for me to warm to her, even more so given the rather unwise decisions she makes in her personal life. Prominent amongst the academic staff are the Dean who’s a bit of a lothario and reminded me of Howard Kirk from Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man, and Hugh Loxton, the Senior Fellow who has led the Reading Party for many years (of whom more later).

I confess I struggled a bit with the whole concept of the Reading Party which seemed to be more about outdoor activities and socialising than preparation for Final exams. Besides Sarah and Hugh, I found there were few members of the party I really got to know in any detail, the exception being Priyam who finds herself weighed down by the expectations of her family to achieve academic success. Even Tyler, who Sarah finds herself drawn to, seemed a rather remote figure, always on the periphery.  Having said that, I liked the way the author explored the dynamics of the group: the alliances, the disagreements, the contrast between the passive and the dominant characters, the risk-takers and the more hesitant. Even where the various members of the Reading Party choose to sit to pursue their reading – alongside others or in a room on their own – gave little hints about their character.  Sarah finds herself having to tread the fine line between being ‘in charge’ of the group or being one of them.  It’s a particularly difficult line when it comes to her relationship with Tyler.

I enjoyed seeing Sarah gradually warm to Hugh, recognising that he is not the stuffy old man stuck in his ways and hidebound by tradition she’d thought he was initially. In fact, Hugh became much the most interesting character for me, especially when the discovery of a journal suggests that many of Sarah’s assumptions about him are completely wrong.

Those of us who lived through the 1970s will be taken back in time by the references to singing along to music on a cassette player, eating Bird’s Eye custard, listening to the album Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, and celebrating Virginia Wade winning Wimbledon. The very scholarly discussion about the nomenclature of the dish ‘toad-in-the-hole’ made me chuckle. I was also struck by the analogy between refining an academic paper and pruning roses. First trimming new shoots and snipping off dead wood to see the shape of the whole better, then removing old branches or stems that are too close together and then finally standing back to assess the result. I think this could easily apply to writing book reviews as well!

For readers who’ve grown attached to the characters in the book, the Epilogue acts as a ‘Where Are They Now?’ potted history of  their post-university lives.

The Reading Party is a gently paced novel that contains some interesting insights into the development of women’s equality in academic institutions and illustrates how women’s behaviour has often been judged to different (higher) standards than that of men. There are also some wonderful descriptions of the landscape of Cornwall, the location of the Reading Party. You can find a reading guide on the website of the author’s publisher, Muswell Press.

In three words: Insightful, gentle, eloquent

Try something similar: The Glittering Prizes by Frederic Raphael

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Fenella GentlemanAbout the Author

Fenella Gentleman studied PPE at Wadham College, Oxford, when it became mixed. She participated in two reading parties in Cornwall. After graduating she worked in publishing before moving into marketing and communications in the professions. She lives in London and North Norfolk. The Reading Party is her first novel.

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