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The blurb (from Amazon)
New Year's Eve, 1940: Evie Chase, the beautiful debutante daughter of a rich and adoring RAF commander, listens wistfully to the swing music drifting out from the ballroom, unable to join in the fun. With bombs falling nightly in London, she is determined that the coming year will bring a lot more than dances, picnics and tennis matches. She is determined to make a difference to the war effort.
5th January, 1941: Evie curses her fashionable heels as they skid on the frozen ground of her local airfield. She is here to join the ATA, the civilian pilots who ferry Tiger Moths and Spitfires to bases across war-torn Britain.
Two other women wait nervously to join up: Stella Grainger, a forlorn young mother who has returned from Singapore without her baby boy and Megan Jones, an idealistic teenager who has never left her Welsh village.
Billeted together in a tiny cottage in a sleepy country village, Evie, Stella and Megan must learn to live and work together. Brave, beautiful and fiercely independent, these women soon move beyond their different backgrounds as they find romance, confront loss, and forge friendships that will last a lifetime.
I was really looking forward to reading this novel as it is an era I do enjoy and I had discovered the ATA girls in another historical romance and wanted to read more.
Kate Lord Brown has written an absorbing story of 3 girls, from different backgrounds, brought together through their desire to help the war effort flying aeroplanes.
Evie has led a charmed life supported by Daddy and her step-mother. Life in the ATA and sharing a cottage with 2 other girls, should be a shock to her, but she takes it all in her stride as the confident member of the group.
Stella, quieter and with a past that is not clear to begin with, has left her young son in the care of her in-laws to join up. She is not forward in letting others know about how she came to be a single mother.
Megan Jones has only ever known the family farm in Wales until now.
The story line is very engaging, the characters are larger than life and very easy to get on with. There are some cameo roles from famous figures of that time.
I enjoyed the balance of not only the social and romance side of life for the girls but also the actual flying. It was very interesting to read about the less glamorous side of being in the ATA, the often very dangerous flying missions. These girls, some very young and never away from home before, were risking their lives ferrying aeroplanes around the country.
Fascinating insight into the ATA, a great read, and I am looking forward to reading The Perfume Garden next.
4.5 out of 5 for me!
review copy
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