Set in England in 1919, and written with humour and compassion, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is about the lives of women in the years following WWI. Their plight after the men return from war is real.
Constance Haverhill, a young lady who just completed accounting courses by correspondence struggles to find work, as the men returning take all of the available accounting positions. She becomes a companion to an elderly woman, Mrs. Fog, who is recovering from an illness at a posh seaside resort.
There she meets Poppy Wirral, a well to do young woman who runs a ladies motorcycle club. Poppy's friends welcome Constance into their club. While the country is now celebrating Peace the women at the club are forced to realize that the freedoms they had during the war are being taken away.
Many engaging characters in this witty and compassionate tale.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada/Doubleday for an arc of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

If you enjoyed Simonson's first books or: Anne Perry's WWI novels, Rilla of Ingleside, The Jane Austen Society, or the Guernsey Literary..., this book is for you.

I loved Helen Simonson's first two novels, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and The Summer Before the War, evoking that same kind of rural, stiff upper lip, earnest, class anxious community. In her new novel Simonson takes us to a coastal town in England at the end of the first World War. Constance has very little, aside from the  patronage of a wealthy titled family– but now that her mother is dead she has even fewer options. For the last summer before she has to find a job, she's staying at a nice hotel as a companion, to help Mrs. Fog get over a bad case of influenza, (luckily there is no whiff of Rebecca in the picture). She makes friends with Poppy, an iconoclastic young woman from the great house who is running a motorcycle taxi employing women who've been kicked out of their jobs now that the men are home from war. Disparity between the sexes, wealth, and social status present most of the conflict in this book, and there is plenty. The classist, racist Englishman and woman are not sugar coated, and not everyone learns to do better. Balanced by the thrill of motorcycling and flying, friendship and romance. I love the writing: the description and insights are wonderfully written, although I did feel that some of the snobbishness was beyond imagination even for that era in Great Britain.

Thanks to @netgalley, @penguinrandomca and author for this advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

4.5/5 Historical fiction of a summer in an English coastal town in the months after World War One. Told from the perspective of various characters of different classes, genders and war experiences. A interesting and informative read.