Review: Bloomsbury Girls

Natalie Jenner’s debut novel, The Jane Austen Society, was one of my favourite reads of 2020. When I learned she’d have a new book coming out this year, I was thrilled. Bloomsbury Girls won’t hit my top ten list for 2022 but it was a really enjoyable historical fiction that I loved reading.

Here’s the book’s description:

Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare book store that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager's unbreakable fifty-one rules. But in 1950, the world is changing, especially the world of books and publishing, and at Bloomsbury Books, the girls in the shop have plans:
Vivien Lowry: Single since her aristocratic fiance was killed in action during World War II, the brilliant and stylish Vivien has a long list of grievances - most of them well justified and the biggest of which is Alec McDonough, the Head of Fiction.
Grace Perkins: Married with two sons, she's been working to support the family following her husband's breakdown in the aftermath of the war. Torn between duty to her family and dreams of her own.
Evie Stone: In the first class of female students from Cambridge permitted to earn a degree, Evie was denied an academic position in favor of her less accomplished male rival. Now she's working at Bloomsbury Books while she plans to remake her own future.
As they interact with various literary figures of the time - Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, Sonia Blair (widow of George Orwell), Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and others - these three women with their complex web of relationships, goals and dreams are all working to plot out a future that is richer and more rewarding than anything society will allow.

The biggest issue I had with this novel was that there were simply too many characters to keep track of. Jenner made that work with JAS but I had trouble caring about and connecting with every single character who popped up in this book – and I wanted to care about them all! They were all important in their own way, but I can’t help but think the story could have been tighter and better if some of the side characters remained strictly to the side and didn’t try to become a more developed character.

If you’re not a fan of slower historical fiction stories, you might not enjoy this one. I, however, quite like them and it was great to read and get a sense of what it would have been like in 1950s London, especially for women. The three main women, Vivien, Grace, and Evie (who readers will remember from JAS), were all so different and that made the story really interesting to me. They were approaching life in different ways but they were all hemmed in by the same rules for and stereotypes about women.

I was, unsurprisingly, a huge fan of the setting of this book. Not only that it was set in London (and I was reading it just as my sister was there) but that it took place at a bookstore. I mean, swoon! I desperately wanted to be wandering London with the characters and spending all my time working in Bloomsbury Books. It made my book loving, wanderlust heart very happy.

Bloomsbury Girls was a really lovely historical fiction title that I think many readers will enjoy. Natalie Jenner has a knack for finding interesting historical tidbits and weaving them into a story full of characters you enjoy meeting. I cannot wait for her next book!

*An egalley of this novel was provided by the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*