Reviewed by Emma Crowley
As the Great War rages on, will the truth come out?
1915. Best friends Irene, Maggie and Annie are proud members of the newly renamed Women's Police Service. While Britain's men are away fighting in France, the girls are doing their bit by keeping the peace at home in London's East End.
But out of the blue, Irene is given the opportunity to be stationed near an army barracks in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Having recently experienced some heartbreak and keen for the adventure, she decides to go. What could possibly go wrong?
It turns out, plenty. One of the other WPS girls takes an immediate dislike to her and makes her life a misery. On top of that, the man she thinks could be the answer to all her problems isn't all he seems. And when she finds a psychologically disturbed deserter in hiding, she has a very difficult decision to make . . .
Can Irene overcome all these obstacles without Maggie and Annie by her side, and find true happiness at last?
Many thanks to Hodder and Stoughton via NetGalley for my copy of The Bobby Girls Secrets to review via NetGalley and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
What an absolute pleasure to return to the world of Irene, Maggie and Annie in The Secrets of the Bobby Girls by Johanna Bell. I loved the first book, The Bobby Girls, as to me it was fresh, exciting and innovative in many ways. One being that I had never heard of the WPS, Women’s Police Service, before. The WPS was set up to protect women and children in general in the war years or women and prostitutes who get into trouble with soldiers on leave. The girls were not welcomed initially by male police officers as they believed the women were not capable of carrying out their roles. But the trio soon proved their worth and became an essential part of the London borough where they patrol the streets. Johanna Bell has brought something new to the wartime saga books which I love to read and highlighted the crucial role women played. In a way they were another string to the suffragette movement and without the dedication of these incredible women would we be in the place we are today as women in society.
The three girls come from vastly different backgrounds but they have formed a strong bond and at this stage they are more like sisters than workmates and friends. I thought this new story would continue to follow the girls as they go about their work in the Boundary Estate but it soon became apparent that Irene was to be the main focus of this book and she would be pushed outside her comfort zone because of her grit and steely courage to do the right thing for women in need. Irene has been hiding numerous secrets from her friends, some the reader is already privy to but you get the sense there is a lot more that she is hiding. She still feels that her fledging relationship with police officer Frank is too good to be true. She believes she is not good enough for him and if he finds out the truth he would dump her in a flash.
But fate has a way of taking over and Irene is left heartbroken and not for the reasons she thought she would be. This gave her even more of a reason to leave and apply for a new job in Grantham where until now the WPS had not been acting in the best interests of the prostitutes there and when she hears this new job will be a paying one it gives her all the more reason to apply. Soon she is accepted and she leaves behind her friends. I thought it was a bold and brave move for Irene to make given she had well established herself working as part of a trio. But deep down she knew she had more to offer and wanted to help as many people as she could. The camp at Grantham is packed full of soldiers and they are not behaving themselves and nor are the woman in the town either.
It would be so easy to judge both the women and men for their actions in seeking out pleasure and in the women's case the need for money to keep their families going during the tough war years and yes I did judge them for some parts of the book. Yet Johanna Bell writes such a convincing story and puts forward such a positive and solid argument that my opinions changed and I felt more empathy for their situations. I also came to really appreciate the work of the WPS, they were a unit ahead of their time and they battled through so many struggles and obstacles to make their cause a worthy and successful one.
No doubt about it, Grantham is a new challenge for Irene. When she meets her new work colleagues and assesses the lie of the land in the town she wonders has she bitten off more than she can chew. Helen Miller is their unofficial leader and the women of the town and their families flock to her for advice. Helen was like the mammy figure with a soft side but for the most part she was all business and worked herself to the bone. Ruby and Mary are her other co-workers. Ruby is quiet and unassuming and was such a frustrating character for the majority of the book. Time and time again she saw Mary being so mean to Irene and she never said a word and turned a blind eye. She was weak and subservient in a way and if she couldn’t stand up to Mary, how was she going to work the streets of Grantham and stop what was going on? Surely they should have all being working together and not have their own individual causes like Irene, Annie and Maggie had done in London.
Irene is someone who always pushes forward and places herself outside of her comfort zone and there were times I wondered how she bit her tongue when Mary was just being downright rude and horrible. Mary was the mean girl, the nasty character that no one could warm to at all. She had the biggest chip on her shoulder and took such satisfaction from patrolling the streets trying to catch women out so they could be thrown in jail. It was like she was trying to boost up her numbers of women caught as if she was in a competition to win a trophy and lots of glory. Mary was distinctly unlikeable and didn’t endear herself to anyone. She showed such prejudice which really highlighted what many women at the time were up against. She was spiteful, vindictive and the most cruel of people and even though the reasons for this become apparent by the end I still didn’t like her. As the saying goes, can a leopard ever change their spots? Irene wants to help Mary to see the women and prostitutes in a fairer light but I think she had a very tough challenge on her hands.
Although Irene’s quest to better the lives of the women of Grantham, and to do so in as peaceful way as possible, forms a very strong storyline throughout the book I enjoyed how a more personal side to Irene began to emerge. We get more clues and insights into her past which helps the reader understand what really motivates her. That’s not to say she is all strong and life is plain sailing for her. I thought when it came to the romance side and her falling for Charles Murphy, who is a rich and important businessman in the town, she showed vulnerability and that perhaps her thinking process and judgement weren’t always straight forward rather they were slightly clouded. I could see what she was falling into as there were plenty of little hints dropped here and there as to the true nature of the avenue she was venturing down on the romantic front. Even the arrival of Annie and Maggie for a visit couldn’t deter her from what she had her heart and mind set on. Even the reader could see she was very much treading a very dangerous path. I was extremely worried as to what would happen to her and kept turning the pages with baited breath eager to see how things would pan out.
I thought it was great that the focus for this book was a different girl as in we certainly get to know a lot more about Irene and even more so that the storyline moved away from London to a different setting to show another side to the work of the WPS. It was brave of the author to think outside the box a bit and keep the story fresh. It would have been so easy to keep the exact same setting and just literally have a direct continuation of book one and just have had similar storylines. Instead she is pushing the boundaries with her writing, providing new, interesting and challenging experiences for her characters.
The Bobby Girls Secrets was a brilliant read and confirmed that Johanna Bell is an author to watch as I can sense this series will go from strength to strength with each book published. Quite often, second and subsequent books in a series can’t match the success of the first in terms of readability and storylines but here Johanna has certainly succeeded in doing that. My only problem is that I left it too long to read considering how much I had enjoyed book one. But on reflection I now have the luxury of diving straight into the next in the series Christmas with the Bobby Girls.
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