Land Girls book #3
by Roland Moore
GENRE : #Christmas-war-time-fiction
My rating: ★★★☆☆
Actually 3.5 is my rating.
Looking for a historical romance? Then skip to another book!
Looking for a fiction with strong and stubborn women and a bit of suspense ? Then it could be the book for you.
__PLOT IN SHORT ___ England. Christmas 1944
All the land girls of Pasture Farm, Connie Carter, Joyce Fisher and Esther Reeves hope this could be the last Christmas of this dreaded war.
But as the day approaches, word spreads in sleepy Helmstead that two German Airmen are on the run.
With everyone on alert, the atmosphere is tense and at a certain point the situation becomes really heated because the girls will find themselves face to face with the enemy...
________ *** _______ *** ________
Usually this kind of book/series offers passionate love stories with a little drama, set in times of war... It was what I expected together with a Christmas atmosphere made of simple things, deep feelings and emotions and touching moments involving not only the couple protagonist, but also the other side characters.
None of this!
Unexpectedly, this book led me to experience an adventure made up of reckless women, suspense and danger alternating with a little action, two villains, one of whom is declared and the other sneaky and hidden in the shadows and a nice (and absolutely unexpected) surprise in the happy ending.
All of this made it an ENGAGING and exciting READ.
__ MAIN CHARACTERS ___ the protagonists of this book are 3 girls who work on a farm during the war, they were in fact "Land Girls" (those girls and women, coming from all social classes, who replaced male farm workers who had gone to war.)
I really liked the atmosphere of camaraderie that formed between these women and girls, of different ages, who found themselves united in a common effort to help their country.
I liked the atmosphere of sacrifice mixed with the anxiety of the uncertainty of the future, because nowadays (at least in Western countries and not at war) we take everything for granted and we complain about every little thing and every little lack, not thinking that life is just a flutter of wings.
I liked seeing how these women, despite everything, were animated by tenacity, good will and resilience and I liked seeing how they took the position head on, but always thinking first of not endangering the people they loved.
__ WHY ONLY 3 (actually 3.5 rounded down to 3 ) STARS THEN ? __
Some things that I didn't like :
1) If I choose to read a book with the word "Christmas" in the title, I expect to be enveloped in a warm Christmas atmosphere.
In this book the only Christmassy thing is the countdown of how many days until Christmas.
Each chapter begins with: 8 days until Christmas, 7 days until Christmas, 6 days until Christmas etc...
Then there is a scene in which characters talk about where everyone will spend Christmas, but there is nothing Christmassy here.
2) The writer while describing/narrating a certain scene, suddenly makes the characters go into their past memories and this even lasts for pages, which led me to forget what was happening in the current scene.
A very confusing writing style.
In the same way, the author goes from scenes on the farm with the girls to scenes of the German airmen or the doctor in the hospital, suddenly and without pauses between one topic and another.
The author divided the chapters according to the days left until Christmas, but in my opinion it would have been better to divide the chapters according to the two realities that were being told in the story (the one of the girls and that one of the pilots, at least until the moment which all these characters found themselves on the same scene).
3) I would have liked the author to delve more deeply into the characters, but probably, having dedicated each of the past books in the series to each girl, he didn't consider it necessary.
I think that giving more depth to the characters in each book, even if they are part of a series, is important, because each book is readable as a standalone (including this one) and it is obvious that not all readers read all the books in the same series (otherwise we wouldn't have time to explore other genres and authors).
Thanks for reading my opinion and for your patience with my text, I'm sorry for any errors but English isn't my native language.
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