The Light Over London --Book review

 

The Light Over London  by Julia Kelly  

Are you into a bit of romance combined with a bit of history? If you are, Julia Kelly’s 2019 entry titled The Light Over London might be up your alley. It is a part of an entertaining and instructive genre that has recently produced a number of novels about women’s roles in the second world war. Jacqueline Winspear has dealt with female pilots, for instance and others have dealt with women code breakers at Bletchley Park and women’s service in intelligence. Some of the most courageous even parachuted into France to work with the resistance. 

Kelly has hitched her star to this  market by writing about the “ack ack” women who became part of anti-aircraft gun crews in London and other English cities. If you have not heard of these young volunteer patriots, you will get a full measure of enjoyment from the history alone.  And if you like some romance you can settle comfortably into the love affairs of two women from two different times and backgrounds.

Louise Keene, a sheltered young village girl, is swept off her feet by Paul, a dashing young spitfire pilot in the WW II Brit Air Force. To do her part in the war effort, she joins the women’s auxiliary of the British Army and her training reveals an expertise in maths that earns her an assignment to an anti-aircraft gun crew. At the same time she also begins a diary that records her feelings, her letters, and her beloved Paul’s responses.

Sixty years later, Cara Hargraves, a recently divorced woman working for an antique business, finds a tin box that contains old memorabilia and Louise Keene’s unfinished WW II diary. Cara is fascinated by the find and embarks on a search to learn more about the diarist and the described love affair. Conveniently, Cara also has a single male neighbor who offers to help in the search. 

From here on the book alternates chapters between Cara’s investigation in the present and Louise’s experiences from the past. The fairly traditional gimmick to integrate  the two stories seemed a bit arbitrary to me and the sexual sizzle remained resolutely  within the “cosy” genre guidelines.  But, overall, the material on the training and lives of the "gunner" girls was engaging and historically informative. I had never heard of these women. They were prohibited from engaging in combat, but they could do everything to aim and prepare the guns to fire except pull the actual trigger. It is not at all surprising to learn that a fair number of them were killed or injured while serving their country.      

 This is not a great book by any stretch of the imagination, but it retains enough bang for your proverbial buck to give it a try.  I give it a 3.5 out of 5