This is the 2nd time I have read this long book. It includes so much of of life on the home front just before,during and after
the 2nd world war in the UK.
It would make an excellent series. I think it is the bodice ripping,awful cover that keeps this book from being noticed for
something like a series as in Home Fires! ( )

definitely a junk food sort of book. Empty calories, but it tastes good going down. ( )

The title of this book sounds like it would be something of a Harlequin Romance with lots of lust and seduction. I suppose it contained a bit of that but this was just a good, engrossing novel. Taking place in England during the war, it is the story of three women and their struggle and survival during the war. While some might say it wasn't much struggle, since they all come from or married into privilege, it does portray well what life might have been like for women of their class during the era.

Grace finds it difficult to find her own voice with a demanding husband and overbearing mother-in-law. Florence's husband is abusive in a time where women don't talk and complain of such things. She tries to find the courage to make a different life for herself. Clarissa is the social butterfly, beautiful, charming without a care in the world. She is faced with a tragedy that forces her to prove she is more than a pretty face.

Not friends at first, these women learn to depend and gain strength from each other as they discover independence and confidence during difficult times. Through this they find out the meaning of genuine friendship. ( )

Anybody that knows my reading life knows that I love books about World War two. Especially about England,the home front. If ever a book was served up to me to read and love while on vacation this was it! A God send! The Harlequinish,Danielle Steely cover belies a wonderful book that is really historical fiction told through the experiences of three very different girls actually starting in 1938. the story continues on till 1945 with a brief epilogue from 1948. Wonderful characters,great story! I read 500 pages in 4 days while at the pool on Cape Cod,etc. When a book is good,it is good and you can not wait to get back to it. I just took out No Angel from the library which is part of a trilogy for most of the 20th century. Does it get any better than that? Where have you been,Penny vincenzi all my adult reading life????? ( )

Good saga-type novel. Really enjoyed it.

Back Cover Blurb:
Grace Marchant marries Charles Bennett at the beginning of the second world war, and loses him before she has really begun to know him - or even herself. In the five years while he is away, she makes her own life, on her own terms, and finds a new love, overwhelming and exciting in a way that her relationship with her husband never was. The return of Grace's husband, not dead at all, but very much alive, not only presents her with the most agonising of dilemmas, but brings to light many things which would have been much better left in the dark..... ( )