Book Review: Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce

 

Goodreads Summary: London, 1941. Amid the falling bombs, Emmeline Lake dreams of becoming a fearless Lady War Correspondent. Unfortunately, Emmy instead finds herself employed as a typist for the formidable Henrietta Bird, the renowned agony aunt at Woman’s Friend magazine. Mrs. Bird refuses to read, let alone answer, letters containing any form of Unpleasantness, and definitely not those from the lovelorn, grief-stricken or morally conflicted.

But the thought of these desperate women waiting for an answer at this most desperate of times becomes impossible for Emmy to ignore. She decides she simply must help and secretly starts to write back – after all, what harm could that possibly do?

Goodreads Ratings: 3.78 stars with over 36,000 ratings

Genre Listing: Historical Fiction, World War II, British Literature, Book Club

Goodreads Challenge: 16/50   (Hey! I'm catching up!)

2021 Reading Challenge: #5 Read a Book that starts with the letter D (find the entire challenge here)

Book Review:

Yay! I'm getting caught up on my reading. I suspect this will not last long as I've got a handful of large books I want to read and will likely just get behind again. I'm trying to knock out a few easy categories with short books to give myself a buffer.

I picked up Dear Mrs. Bird while it was on sale. I actually didn't have high expectations for it but was pleasantly surprised. The story follows Emmy during WWII as she starts a new job for what she thinks is to be a Lady War Correspondent. Due to the lack of details in the ad and a lack of asking questions on Emmy's part, she finds herself a typist for a women's advice columnist.

Mrs. Bird is a strict, no-nonsense type of woman who feels that the etiquette of 1918 is what readers still want. Therefore, she has a list of topics she deems as unpleasant and refuses to respond to. Emmy feels sorry for the readers and decides to respond to them in secret.

Even though it wasn't a mystery, this read very much like a cozy mystery genre to me. Aside from the darker topics of war, the rest of the story read in that cutesy fashion I've grown accustomed to in cozy mysteries. With the darker issues surrounding WWII going on, I thought that was interesting. I have no idea how accurate the details were. If they were well researched, that'd be such a terrifying time to live through. I'm ashamed to admit that my WWII knowledge is sketchy at best as much as I like reading about history. I mostly fell asleep during history class in school, and it's not one I've read up much about on my own. I typically gravitate towards Revolutionary times and earlier. 

I thought that Emmy was likable enough. I felt it read like a cozy mystery because her default setting was to try and get involved with things way above her head and solve all of the problems. She had the best of intentions, but they don't always go the way she plans. I think the way her secret about writing the letters came out was interesting, and I kind of expected something along those lines (trying to not give too many spoilers.) 

I love that she has a relationship form through writing letters. That just seems quintessential of the era. Charles seemed like a way better upgrade than her ex. Everything with Charles was left so open-ended that he felt a little forgotten towards the end of the book. I'm hoping that the second book picks that up. We also got to get a glimpse of her best friend Bunty in Dear Mrs. Bird. Bunty went through a lot, possibly more than Emmy did. I felt so incredibly sorry for Bunty. 

Overall, I really liked the book. It was a little cheesy at times, but it was still enjoyable. I'm looking forward to the second book, which is available for Pre-Order now. I have it on my wishlist to wait and see if the price drops once it's available.