Reviewed by Emma Crowley
The war is raging in Europe. These girls will do everything they can on the home front – but is a happy ever after possible in such dark and uncertain times?
Manchester, 1940: The minute war was declared, best friends Sally and Deborah volunteered for the home guard, willing to do anything to help their boys fighting overseas. An Auxiliary Fire Service girl by night, Sally ends up stationed at the salvage depot by day. Working amidst the scrap metal and waste paper, helping to make do and mend, isn’t quite the glamorous life in uniform she’d imagined! But she’s determined to do her best, and turn saucepans into Spitfires.
When Sally meets Andrew, a quiet carpenter with a heart-breaking smile who understands how important her work is, she finally feels as though her efforts to keep calm and carry on are making a difference. As love blossoms, Sally feels herself opening up to Andrew in a way she’d never imagined possible.
But then, just as Sally feels as hopeful as she can be in these times of war, a devastating air raid threatens everything she holds dear. As bombs rain down all over Manchester, deadly fires begin to destroy homes, and lives. With Andrew out rescuing families from the rubble, Sally rushes towards the plumes of smoke that fill the night sky. And is horrified to realise the very worst hit area has the salvage yard right at its heart.
Desperate to help in any way she can, Sally, with her fellow salvage girls by her side, sets to work. But what will they find when the smoke clears? Will Sally and Andrew get the happy ending they so deserve? Or will her one chance at true love be lost forever as the morning dawns…?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Homefront Girls to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Homefront Girls is the first in a trilogy by Susanna Bavin which follows two young women living in Manchester and their experiences during World War Two. It’s a nice easy read. A good family saga typical of the genre showing the fear that everyone livid with during the long years of war and they dealt with it on a daily basis. Every aspect of life was altered and that nothing could be taken for granted in war time. Every minute counted and should be appreciated. The book does get off to a slow start and given the blurb I thought the story would specifically follow Sally and Deborah but that was not the case as a different girl did come into the story several chapters in. To be honest, I was glad Deborah didn’t feature that heavily apart from the initial chapters as I really didn’t like her character at all especially the way she reacted to Sally sticking up for herself. The story was all the better for changing tack and concentrating on Sally and Betty. There’s was a tentative relationship initially but I enjoyed seeing how things changed and why.
July 1940 and Sally White lives with her parents in Manchester and works in the Food Office alongside her best friend Deborah whom she has known all her life. People are slowly becoming accustomed to life during wartime and the constant fear of invasion by the Germans is ever present. Everything has completely changed for the people of Britain. Air raid shelters have been established. Anderson Shelters have sprung up in gardens. Any available plot of land has been turned over to growing vegetables. Carrying gas masks everywhere and the blackout have become routine. Rules and regulations have to be strictly adhered to. Gone is the freedom they had known and enjoyed. Now that the phoney war is over the threat of bombs being dropped is becoming a dangerous reality.
Sally is a confident and capable young girl who wants to do all she can to help with the war effort. Working in the food office means she is responsible for giving out ration cards and helping housewives with planning and recipes. She also goes undercover and tests that shopkeepers are not giving out more than the allotted rations or doing so without ration cards. Here is where she encounters Betty when she is out on one of her tests. Betty spectacularly fails the test leading to a huge fine and being fired from her job. Needless to say when the two women meet again through different circumstances Betty has a huge chip on her shoulder and the pair don’t get off to the most auspicious of starts.
I loved Sally from the start as she always knew her own mind and she wasn’t afraid to follow her heart even when it meant going against what society expected or the wishes her parents had for her. She had had a few brief dates with Deborah’s brother Rod before he was sent away to work in the shipyards and both families expected them to get married. But any scene where Sally and Rod were together there was a sense of unease emanating from Sally. That she wasn’t fully comfortable in his presence or he never made her feel good about herself. He was sneaky and pushy and little things he did made for uncomfortable reading. There was definitely a mean steak to him. At a birthday /farewell party for Rod a surprise proposal should mean happiness all round but Sally follows her gut and declines. I thought fair play to her she knew she wasn’t happy and could never have a long lasting and contented life with Rod. But saying no to him led to divisions between both families and the loss of the friendship with Deborah.
Here is where Deborah showed her true colours. The way she reacted was awful. I know Rod was her brother but could she not have seen that Sally must have had very valid reasons for not agreeing to marry Rod? Deborah makes Sally’s life miserable in the Food Office. So much so that the conflict leads to their boss arranging for a new job for Sally in a different area in Manchester working in a salvage depot. Here is where Sally’s strength of character really came to the fore and she pushed her own feelings aside and took on this new role with grace and dignity and again she was determined to make a difference in this new role.
Romance does feature for Sally and I loved how this connected to the new job in her life. Meeting Andrew at the Food Office made her realise that her suspicions were correct and that Rod wasn’t and never would be the one for her. I did think they really rushed things in that a proposal came very very quickly even by wartime standards and her mother clearly thought so to. But the solution that was reached meant it opened a different aspect of the plot and it drove the second half of the book on. Making it much stronger and interesting.
As for Betty, it’s not that I disliked her but that I found her quite immature and the way she reacted to things was unnecessary. Losing her job in the shop and her stepmother finding her the job in the salvage yard meant that she had to move out of home. Which really was the making of her as she had to grow up and take responsibility for things. That it wasn’t just her individually soldiering on through the war. That with team work and initiative both she and Sally could do great things. When Sally arrives to begin work at the salvage yard I thought Betty gave her a very frosty reception and she was definitely still smarting with her over losing her previous job. But she was young and easily slighted and brooded far too long on things. A good dose of reality was needed and was received as the two women volunteer for fire watching duty each night. These scenes were quick and dramatic and brought home the danger people faced on a nightly basis and it brought the two women closer together after what one would call a very rocky start.
It was fascinating to read about work at the Food Office and the salvage depot. I had never given any consideration to this aspect of war work before. Yes, I’ve read a few fleeting lines in books saying all metal was given over to the country to be used in the war but the way Sally and Betty operated the depot and what was brought there was really interesting. I really loved the angst and annoyance brought about by the character of Mrs Lockwood and I was desperate for her to get her comeuppance in order to let the good qualities of Sally and Betty shine through. There were a few twists and turns towards the end of the story which added a little bit of meat to the plot and made things a bit grittier.
I had been waiting for that fine line between things being all nice and pleasant and then that added depth that the book needed and it did come. I enjoyed the ending but it made me realise that things are only really getting started and that there is potentially a lot more ahead for the Home Front Girls - Sally and Betty. Friendship, family bonds, working together as a unit and a community, sacrifices and hardship are all themes explored in this enjoyable read and I am glad that I have book two Courage for the Home Front Girls waiting to be read on my Kindle as I wasn’t ready to leave the characters behind as they had only hinted at their potential and the stories they still had to share.
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