A charming easy read centred around an East London Library in WW2 and the ladies running it. I find books set in one of the worst parts of our world history very interesting and the resilience of those people living through it just amazing as they suffer through the Blitz while their loved ones are away defending all that is good.

Another great instalment of the library girls. Ww2 is still raging and the girls are trying to find more ways to utilise the library space.
Cordelia and Robert are getting closer but when a surprise announcement is made how will Cordelia cope. Jane has her daughter evacuated and her husband still in the front line but she has some surprising news as well. Mavis still thinks of the little girl she rescued and now has her heart set on making her a permanent fixture in her life but she will have to go through a long wait for that to happen.
Great to catch up with the girls again and can’t wait to see what they get up to next

A nice and sweet look at a group of women and a Buddhist man during 1943 in the East End, centered around a library. I enjoyed the light entertainment and romance.

I fell in love with these girls in the first book so rejoining them and their stories in the war was a joy. The East End got a fair battering, with bombing, houses and lives lost and in amongst it all is Cordelia, Mavis and Jane who staff an unassuming library trying to keep the community together (and in books of course).

Reading the first book isn’t a necessity to this one as you’re filled in well and given the opportunity to get to know the characters so you could just jump in to the series from here but the first one was brilliant too and would thoroughly recommend.

In Hard Times for the East End Library Girls, there’s new faces and plenty of traumas, tragedies and joys to navigate. The pages suddenly disappeared and I’d finished the book before I knew it?! It was so addicting and my kindle was read hot with the speed that I lapped this up.

We’re still at the beginning of the war with these lovable girls so I can only hope that there will be more to follow! Definitely not had enough of this charming trio and I’m constantly rooting for them all. Really enjoyable and entertaining reading.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Boldwood Books for an ARC of this novel.

People who love to read generally love libraries, giving instant appeal to books that feature library settings. This is the second volume of Patricia McBride’s Library Girls series, set in the storied working-class east end of London—here, the Silvertown area. The three librarians introduced in the first novel, Lady Cordelia Carmichael, the first “lady librarian” to head the branch, no doubt also the first from the titled nobility, the middle-aged “rough about the edges” Mavis, and the gentle, timid, Jane, have gotten themselves and their precious library through the first year of the Second World War. As the story opens, Cordelia’s flat and all her belongings have been destroyed, and her physician boyfriend has been conscripted. Mavis has not had word from her enlisted son in some time. Jane’s husband George is injured, as much psychologically as physically, and she is beset by worry for their little daughter, evacuated to the countryside, and her cold and angry mother who lies dying in a hospital. Nor, of course, do the bombings show any sign of ending as 1941 dawns.

The larger war details, including the Blitz and its horrors, are historical and therefore well known. McBride shows us, in gentle strokes, what everyday life might have looked like for the ordinary, often poor, residents of a major city in wartime. She also shows us something often forgotten about libraries, and librarians, many of whom were women. They gave refuge to those who, because of class or because of war, had few places to go to for the sort of comfort that a good book, a newspaper otherwise unaffordable, help in finding needed information, and a bit of fellowship. It’s not that the library provided some magical escape during anxious times when death was a daily fact no matter the age or rank; the author doesn’t gloss over how war and poverty and stress take their toll. Loss and grief spare no one. The three librarians have to deal with the mundane, such as food and clothing shortages, as well as on-going destruction.

There are the administrative hassles of being understaffed and overstretched, facing down book thieves who steal books for resale, superiors who do little more than find fault, patrons they long to help but cannot. There are concerns about the enigmatic Tom, a conscientious objector whose voluntary library hours are a blessing, but whose status, if known by patrons, would be problematic.

There are no thrilling twists or shocking developments, and the pace is slow, while the main characters are sometimes too noble and well-meaning. But if It seems odd to call a story set in wartime in an area downtrodden long before the war a ‘comfort read,’ that’s what this really is. It reminds us that courage and compassion are essential to getting through hard times.