Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce (Review)

Series: Emmy Lake Chronicles #1
Genre: Historical Fiction 
Publisher: Scribner
Released: April 5, 2018
276 pages

About the Book:

London, 1941. Amid the falling bombs Emmeline Lake dreams of becoming a fearless Lady War Correspondent. Unfortunately, Emmy instead finds herself employed as a typist for the formidable Henrietta Bird, the renowned agony aunt at Woman’s Friend magazine. Mrs Bird refuses to read, let alone answer, letters containing any form of Unpleasantness, and definitely not those from the lovelorn, grief-stricken or morally conflicted.

But the thought of these desperate women waiting for an answer at this most desperate of times becomes impossible for Emmy to ignore. She decides she simply must help and secretly starts to write back – after all, what harm could that possibly do?

My Rating & Thoughts:    ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Set in London in the early days of the world war two. Air raids have become a common occurrence. We meet Emmy, who is in her 20s, volunteering at a firehouse as a dispatcher. She dreams of being a war journalist and takes a job as a typesetter at a magazine, not realizing exactly what the job was. We follow her everyday life and watch her grow and learn along the way. She makes some unwise decisions, she had the best of intentions but knew it was wrong and did it anyway. Eventually, she has to deal with the consequences of her actions. I especially enjoyed following her friendship with Bunky and reading the numerous letters throughout. There are some difficult situations that happen, but the story is told with a lightheartedness that it wasn't a heavy read. I really enjoyed the ending and feel like Emmy grew over the course of the story.

(I received a copy of this book from a friend; opinions expressed 

in this review are my honest opinion and completely my own.)