The Saturday Morning Post (No. 79)

Where did this book come from? To be honest, I don't remember. Having finished my last book, I opened up my Fire tablet's Kindle page, and found this week's book in my library. By the look of it, I suspect I downloaded it several years ago when I first started reading again. At that time I was going through the Kindle store looking for free books in several categories, one of them was historical fiction, which this book would fall into. I don't know if I sampled it back then and gave it a miss, or if I never got around to trying it. If I did, I didn't read more than a page. But I've read more than a page this week, so on with the show.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Ops Room Girls  by Vicki Beeby  C+

This is "An uplifting and romantic WW2 saga" or in other words, a cozy World War ll romance novel, the first of a three book series. Now, I am likely not the target audience for this book, so that any reader who's into (tame) romances, will probably rate this book higher than I did. That said there is nothing to dislike about this story and things to like about it.

I would call it a cozy story, as there is no sex to speak of, just romance, friendships, and happy endings, with little violence, no blood and gore. It is set in the summer of 1940, my favorite summer, and recounts the story of Evie, who's mother turned down Evie's scholarship to Oxford upon the death of her father. She who wants Evie to take a job at a bank. Evie is determined to do something more with her life, and on a whim of defiance, joints the WAAF, the Woman's Auxiliary Air Force. She is trained to work in one of the fighter control's centers which were used to direct British fighters to intercept raiding German air forces during the summer leading to the famous Blitz. 

Here she meets and bonds with two other woman becoming the good friends she never had before. And of course, being a romance, she meets and falls in love a handsome pilot, who is constantly in danger. The author has done her homework as to how her job worked, and the operation of the base. However, this it the year and the place, as I said in another post about a book from this period, that is my favorite time in history, and having read a variety of accounts, I've developed my own "sense" of the time and place, and, alas, I've never found a novel that captures my sense of that time and place. I think that despite being about the war, the larger war outside of her job, with England waiting for a Nazi invasion, is hardly touched upon in this book. Indeed, the beginning of the blitz on 7 Sept 1940 with the mass bombing of East London is not even mentioned. It is a minor quibble, and not something the target audience would ever notice nor likely care about. My one other quibble with this book is that while competently written, it has no authorial voice to speak of. I found it rather bland reading. Not bad, just bland.

I also found the structure of the story a bit strange, in that it is told from point of view of the two major romantically linked characters, Evie and Alex, her pilot, with an occasional aside  with another character, here and there. This may be common in romances, for all I know. In any event, we see the thoughts of both of these people, so we, as the reader, know that each is in love with the other, long before they reveal it to each other. Knowing what we know, are we meant to root for them to get together? The same thing applies to the secret Nazi saboteur in the story. The author tips her hand right from the beginning who the saboteur is, so there is no surprise ending. It's him from first to last. Is this suppose to keep the reader on the edge of their seats, waiting for everyone in the book to discover what we know?  I suppose it's not a mystery story, and doesn't pretend to be, but knowing all these secrets, the story seems to substitute one sort of suspense for another, the tension is not within the story, but between the reader and the story, if you get my meaning. We, the reader know everything, but we have to watch the characters waiting for them to discover what we know. 

There are two other books in this series, and Beeby has written several other series featuring women in British military service in WWll. If it sounds like your jam, I wouldn't hesitate to suggest that you give them a try. I was happy to find it in my kindle library, however it got there.