Susanna Bavin

The Home Front Girls is the first book in Susanna Bavin's planned trilogy. If you enjoy WWII historical fiction, you're going to want to add The Home Front Girls to your 'to read' list!

I was hooked in the first chapter. Sally and her bestie, Deborah, work for the Food Office making sure that shop keepers are following the rules for ration books. But the latest 'sting' has repercussions for both Sally and the store clerk, Betty.

I thought Bavin's settings were wonderfully described. The book is set in 1940 Manchester, England. Bavin and her family lived in Manchester for many years and that personal view really works in creating a setting.

Her characters are also wonderfully created. It's very easy to have a favorite, one you'd like to know in real life. And those you wouldn't! Keep your eyes open for Mrs. Lockwood! And who else you ask? Well, I think a budding romance adds a lot this book as well!

I really enjoy this time frame. The 'Keep Calm and Carry On' attitude, the looking out for your neighbours, the social mores, and family. There are lots of hard choices to be made - and duty to follow.

And Bavin has included all of that and more. I'll be watching for the second book.… (altro)

This is the fourth and final book by Susanna Bavin that I have read and reviewed. I've loved all of them but A Respectable Woman is probably my joint favourite along with The Sewing Room Girl.

Nell Hibbert is married to Stan and has a young son, Alf. She goes out grafting, cleaning in a pub, to help the family make ends meet. However, finding out that Stan is living a second life that seems better than the one that she has with him pushes Nell to the limit and she runs away, taking Alf with her. In 1922 leaving your husband wasn't the done thing so she tells new acquaintances that she is a widow and gets on with starting a new life for herself. Of course, eventually the past catches up with her and Nell has to start a new fight, one to keep her family and all she has worked for safe.

This is one of those books that I didn't want to put down and a rare one where I didn't find myself keeping an eye on the page numbers. I was utterly engrossed in Nell and the new life she built for herself in Manchester. She's something of a trailblazer for the time, ambitious and determined to succeed and make a good life for herself. I loved Nell. Nothing seemed to keep her down for long and I was willing her to thrive and to continue achieving far more than her gender and class expectations.

There are many other characters to love in this book and a couple to hate too. My favourite was Jim, a man who returned from the Great War wishing to do more to help other people. I also liked the older women - Nell's landlady and her neighbours - who are pure salt of the earth types who will help anyone in need, and Posy, the landlady's plucky young granddaughter. The least said about Edmund the better, only that he's a very convincingly written villain.

Bavin had me hooked on Nell's story from page one and I was sad when it came to an end. If you like historical fiction/sagas then you're sure to love A Respectable Woman. This is a story that I found completely absorbing and I felt like I could step between the pages into a world that that felt real. I enjoyed it so much.… (altro)

Mary Maitland is the poor relation of the title, the wealthy side of her family being the Kimbers of Ees House. They look down on Mary and her family because her grandfather married……God forbid!......a shop girl. Her grandmother always rues the day she gave up the Kimber name and changed her son's surname to Maitland when she married for a second time.

Mary is a thoroughly lovely character. It's 1908 and women are not expected to achieve very much but she wants more than her Town Hall job, watching all her male colleagues being promoted before her, so she joins a women's employment agency and then turns her hand to writing articles for the press. I loved following her growth as the book progressed and how determined she was not to conform to what her father and society wanted from her (which was not very much!).

There's a family tree at the front of the book and I was very glad of it as the relationships between the Kimbers, Maitlands, and another family, the Rawleys, was quite complicated. The Rawley family did give me two fabulous characters: Helen Rawley, a cantankerous old lady who had given up all hope of a life of her own and spent it instead looking after her brother whilst seething inwardly about it under the surface that polite society decrees she should show; and Greg Rawley, a dastardly chap who is trying desperately to get his hands on family money. Both really made me laugh out loud sometimes and I very much enjoyed Susanna Bavin's sharp humour when telling their stories.

The story covers votes for women and forcible feeding of prisoners, a horrifying practice. I found the whole story to be full of aspects of social history, such as teaching women how to be more hygienic in the home and the difficulties women faced when trying to get their voices heard, which made this a really interesting read for me.

The Poor Relation was a book that I really looked forward to picking up. It felt very real and informed, offering a story that enthralled me and a hint of romance too. I've read Susanna Bavin's books before and I know that this is an author whose work I will enjoy. Highly recommended for historical fiction and saga fans.… (altro)

The Deserter's Daughter is a title that immediately captured my imagination. Set in 1920, the First World War is a very recent memory and it's Carrie Jenkins who finds out that she is the daughter of the title. It's the work of a moment to take her father from war hero to a deserter and it ostracises her and her family from their community.

We know so much now about the war and its effects on the men who fought in it, but at the time emotions ran so high that shell shock was thought of as cowardly behaviour. Because of her family's new status Carrie finds herself gravitating towards Ralph Armstrong, a man who can help her but who is not a good man.

I found this to be such a compelling read, following Carrie as she falls further and further into a murky world of which she knows nothing. Whilst this is very much a saga, there are aspects of a psychological thriller about it, with themes of manipulation, and emotional and physical abuse. Carrie is a thoroughly likeable character, only 20 and with so much on her shoulders, looking after her mother and having an older sister who thinks she's a cut above, and I found her story moving and emotional.

Ralph is a brilliant villain of the piece. I had to smile sometimes as he was just so well-written and his thoughts so barbed. To temper this there are some absolutely lovely characters too and I was particularly fond of kind Mr Weston, who worked at the antiques shop.

I enjoyed the settings from the small Manchester community where the Jenkins family live to the auction rooms and antiques shops that Ralph manages and the large hospital where his doctor brother works trying to help men who were badly affected by the war.

The Deserter's Daughter is an excellent read which transported me to 1920s Manchester. There's heartbreak aplenty but lots of warmth too.… (altro)