4.5 stars, beautifully written book
I'm not typically a very big fan of historical fiction, but this book is more of a character driven novel that happens to be set in the past. It has lovely themes of friendship, family, found family, love, and learning what fulfills a person and makes them happy.
This is the tale of Beatrix, who at age eleven is sent by her parents Millie and Reginald from London to live in America during the peak of World War II. She lives with the Gregory family, with the parents and sons William and Gerald. They forge their way to becoming a family of sorts, spending summers in Maine and with Bea finding herself falling for William. Then the war ends and Beatrix moves back to London. Years pass, and they fall in and out of touch, there are marriages, divorces, deaths, births, and so much life lived on opposite sides of the ocean.
This is a beautifully resonant book. It's wistful, sometimes sad, sometimes hopeful. There are so many relationships and I found myself able to relate to the characters, even the ones who weren't just like me. The longing, the growing and changing, those emotions are so universal and each reader will see something of themselves in the characters and their life journeys.
I partially listened to this as an audiobook and partially read it on the page, and the narrator of the audiobook is superb. She is a wonderful voice for Bea, but also does justice to the other characters and their accents as well. Either medium is an excellent way to experience this book.
I'm not typically a very big fan of historical fiction, but this book is more of a character driven novel that happens to be set in the past. It has lovely themes of friendship, family, found family, love, and learning what fulfills a person and makes them happy.
This is the tale of Beatrix, who at age eleven is sent by her parents Millie and Reginald from London to live in America during the peak of World War II. She lives with the Gregory family, with the parents and sons William and Gerald. They forge their way to becoming a family of sorts, spending summers in Maine and with Bea finding herself falling for William. Then the war ends and Beatrix moves back to London. Years pass, and they fall in and out of touch, there are marriages, divorces, deaths, births, and so much life lived on opposite sides of the ocean.
This is a beautifully resonant book. It's wistful, sometimes sad, sometimes hopeful. There are so many relationships and I found myself able to relate to the characters, even the ones who weren't just like me. The longing, the growing and changing, those emotions are so universal and each reader will see something of themselves in the characters and their life journeys.
I partially listened to this as an audiobook and partially read it on the page, and the narrator of the audiobook is superb. She is a wonderful voice for Bea, but also does justice to the other characters and their accents as well. Either medium is an excellent way to experience this book.