Review: Yours Cheerfully

A.J. Pearce's Dear Mrs. Bird was one of my favourite books of 2018. I loved the hilarious historical fiction novel she had written and the intriguing character of Emmeline Lake. Yours Cheerfully, published on August 10, carries on not long after the previous book ended and allows readers back into the wonderful, if hard and terrifying, lives of Emmy and her friends. I finished it in a day and absolutely adored it.

Here's the book's description:

London, November 1941. Following the departure of the formidable Henrietta Bird from Woman’s Friend magazine, things are looking up for Emmeline Lake as she takes on the challenge of becoming a young wartime advice columnist. Her relationship with boyfriend Charles (now stationed back in the UK) is blossoming, while Emmy’s best friend Bunty, still reeling from the very worst of the Blitz, is bravely looking to the future. Together, the friends are determined to Make a Go of It.
When the Ministry of Information calls on Britain’s women’s magazines to help recruit desperately needed female workers to the war effort, Emmy is thrilled to be asked to step up and help. But when she and Bunty meet a young woman who shows them the very real challenges that women war workers face, Emmy must tackle a life-changing dilemma between doing her duty and standing by her friends.

Because it had been two years (almost exactly) since I read Emmy's first story, I was a bit fuzzy on what, precisely, happened. But Pearce does a great job of reminding readers what had happened in the previous book while avoiding a boring info dump. You don't have to read Dear Mrs. Bird before this one - though I do wholeheartedly recommend it! Each book has it's own sort of feel so they work well on their own but are even better together. 

Emmy is the star of the novel but what makes her such a delight are the people she pulls into her orbit. Her best friend Bunty (whose story absolutely breaks my heart but I have a good feeling about a third book and what might happen next) is wonderful and the friendship between the two is ultimate BFF Goals. The team at the magazine are a delight and the new friends Emmy makes in Anne and the women at the munitions factory were an amazing addition to the story.

Whereas the first book focused on the Blitz (and I still marvel at Pearce's ability to make a novel about such a horrifying time so heartwarming and funny), Yours Cheerfully takes a closer look at what war was like for the women. It's 1941, England has been fighting for years now and, with all the men going to the battlefields, there are holes in the workforce. So many women stepped up (do you ever wonder what you would have done during the war?) but they faced so many hurdles when they did. Married women with children had to earn for their families (especially if they were widowed) but shift work at the factories meant it was almost impossible to arrange childcare. And the men running the factories didn't care. Part of it was they didn't understand but so many of them didn't want to understand. Women made a "fuss" and they came with "baggage" and "men would never ask for time off for the children" and so on and so forth. Easier to sack a woman for having to bring her children in because her mother (if she was lucky enough to have a mother nearby able to provide childcare) was ill than put the effort into creating a Government Nursery like they were supposed to. It was absolutely infuriating, even for a woman like me, in today's world with no children. Pearce wrote about these issues so well and it's a great addition to the many WWII books out there.

Emmy does have a sweetheart and I loved them together (even though they were hardly ever physically together). In addition to being adorable, her relationship with Charles was used to show what it was like for couples during the war. Early on, so many women lost their husbands and fiances that no young couple wanted to wait to get married because they didn't know how long they'd have together - and they usually had hardly any time actually together to even have a wedding. It was common to have hasty weddings before the man shipped off, just in case. Honeymoons were one night spent on leave in a small hotel nearby the train station he had to leave from the next day. It's heartbreaking but also...inspiring, maybe? They were faced with the worst and yet made sure to take the time to marry their sweetheart. Yes, there were monetary gains to be had by being married, I know, but Emmy and Charles' relationship is so sweet that it has me casting a rosy glow over it all. 

Yours Cheerfully is a must read for historical fiction fans. It paints a picture of what it was like in England in 1941 as WWII finally becomes a true world war. Emmy is a character who is smart but also real, in all her bumbling, well meaning actions. She and her friends will make you laugh out loud as you read their story. I cannot wait for A.J. Pearce's next novel!

My review of Dear Mrs. Bird is here.

*An egalley of this novel was provided by Simon & Schuster Canada via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*