An enjoyable and excellent read! I really liked the authors writing style, the intriguing storyline and the well-developed characters. Would recommend!

I was excited to read this book: it comes from one of my favourite publishing houses, has a beautiful cover, and is a Canadian perspective on World War Two. After finishing Bird's Eye View, I think it's a lovely book, but I have to say it was not as wonderful as I had hoped. There were truly beautiful things in this book, but also moments where I felt let-down. Let's start with those.

It'd hard for me to rate a book so low, especially when historical fiction books set in Canada are so few and far between. However, I struggled to read Bird's Eye View and to really give it what it deserves. The first half of the book felt like a modge-podge of different characters, settings, and random events hastily slapped together. For example, Rose's relationship with Max. At first, I thought it was touching, but the author barely mentioned it for the rest of the book. Why was it necessary? Rose meeting her aunt and Roger. Why did the author feel that the scene at the bar was integral to the story? Characters moved in and out of the pages of Bird's Eye View without much explanation or description: many of them static, one-sided, who did not give true interest or depth to Rose's life.

However, there were truly beautiful aspects to Bird's Eye View. The letters from Rose's family and friends were quite lovely, and gave a global perspective to the war. Little inserts of historical facts; like purple fingers for the photo investigators, or the Unorthodox Christian of Canada pilot, gave the book an authentic historical taste. And moments of true human emotion, such as the Red Cross girls' rendition of "The Maple Leaf Forever," or the impromptu sing-along during a bomb raid, or the touching moment when Rose flew some British POW's back over the Cliffs of Dover, made Bird's Eye View cinematic in nature. I also really enjoyed Charlie's presence in the story; he was a really lovely character and I loved his interactions with Rose.

In short, Bird's Eye View has some truly beautiful parts to it. But I was frustrated with it - mostly because I wanted so much more. We don't have very much truly masterful historical fiction set in Canada, and I wanted Bird's Eye View to take my breath away and compensate for that lack. I didn't feel Florence did that. I loved Bird's Eye View, but not as much as I had hoped. It's hard for me to say that, but it's the truth.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in return for my fair and honest review.

Relatively little has been written about the role Canadian women played during WW11, the author sheds light with her first novel. “Birds Eye View” tells the story of Rose Jollife, a young woman from Saskatchewan whose town becomes an air training base.

This novel is more than an historical fiction for addicts. Its alluring storyline, rich prose, vivid description and captivating pace have kept me glued to every word till I reached the final chapter. The protagonist is a Canadian woman in uniform. Although, Rose is a fictional character and the town of Touchwood is a creation the events are factual. Rose joins the air force travels overseas and becomes an interpreter of aerial photographs. This is her story seen through Canadian eyes…..

Ms. Florence describes the prairies beautifully some will certainly recognized the landscape and the setting as North Battleford the actual location for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Throughout the war Rose has a bird’s eye view of the Canadian experience – at Dieppe, in the skies over Germany, on the beaches of Normandy and when Canada shared in the Allied victory. Reading her experiences is so captivating I thought I was there with her bending over photographs searching for details that don’t belong…..

To make this story as historically accurate as possible the author has definitely did an enormous amount of research and has succeeded in penning one of those captivating war story that honours a group of forgotten heroes.

This gem of historical fiction is an excellent read one that should please any historical buffs.

I received this ARC for review from Dundurn.com via Netgalleys

This is one of the most incredible books I have read about women in WW2. There are so many historical facts woven into a really great story. As we read about Rose's desperation for the Canadian government to change the rule and allow women to join the CRAF- which they didn't for many years- her decision to save the money for her passage so she could join the WRAf. Her treacherous journey across the Atlantic and her first impressions of England a country she had grown up loving.
How dirty it was compared to Canada. Her wonderment going into her aunts kitchen and realising that her mother's pantry was bigger. Where do they put everything? She wondered.
Other comparisons were made through the book, an example being that houses in Manchester didn't have indoor toilets. Most didn't have telephones.
But as the story unfolds and Rose is seconded to a unit where her photography and development skills from her job in the town newspaper were needed and we learn about the work done n the spy plane films pulls you in to a time that should never be forgotten.
Rose has bought some soil from the farm land she has left behind and occasionally sniffs it to remember home.
Rose's nightmares are so realistically written, the images she has to pour over every hour hoping to scrape snippets of information to help the ALlies. Including the Dambusters raid. Newsreels showing a daring raid executed by the bombers. Rose shuddering remembering the images she has seen of the devastation caused and people floating through the flood.
I dropped everything yesterday I was so absorbed in Rose's story. Theo only thing I didn't like was the inclusion of the minor affair Rose had with Fowler a bumptious prig. Fowler gave Rose a nightgown that played a vital role in the story, but all I could think of is where would a selfish prig get a luxury item when everything was rationed?
I cried when Rose used her soil,
I cried when she went home.
I spent a lot of yesterday crying I was so involved in the story.
I am convinced the author has laid the way for another book, I sincerely hope so.
This is a flipping good book.

I know that predictions can be hit or miss—they certainly are with me—but sometimes you’ve got to throw one out there, because you feel so passionately that a book deserves wider attention than it’s getting.

I feel that way about Birds Eye View, by Elinor Florence. What it has in common with Code Name Verity and the BBC serial The Bletchley Circle is a story featuring the sort of smart women who really did contribute to winning WW II, but whose work largely went unsung partly for social reasons and partly because their work was heavily classified for the next half-century.

Of course there’s going to be a certain element of modern outlook mixed with that of women born right around the time WW I ended. Code Name Verity is probably the most contemporary of them, with its bitter cynicism and its implied approval setting up its shocker. The TV serial I think got closer to depicting women of the time, but I believe that Florence comes closest to the voices of the women whose memoirs and collected letters I’ve read from that time. But it’s not just the period sensibility that made this a standout, it’s that rare quality of grace in dealing with that most horrible of human endeavors: mass warfare.

The novel begins with an extremely tense moment as female air wardens wait at an isolated air field for reconnaissance fliers to return. The weather over England has just taken an abrupt turn toward ice storm, which is bad news for airplanes . . .

And then our first-person narrator, Rose Jolliffe, is a young Canadian woman living in a tiny prairie town called Touchwood. It’s 1939, and she works assisting a foul-mouthed, snuff-taking veteran named MacTavish, who loathes the British officer corps and thinks Canada is well out of any more wars.

But Rose, as well as most of the other young people in her town, yearn to do their bit. Rose is mostly motivated by a strong wish to get out of tiny, boring Touchwood, away from farming. The first sign she gets that war is not glamorous is watching the faces of the young men going away to be trained—and their anxious parents, who all recollect WW I. The second sign happens comes when the local area is used for pilot training, but she is determined. She signs up for the women’s auxiliary service, knowing that the most they will be doing is scrubbing, laundry, and tea service—however her training with MacTavish’s printing press lifts her out of the regular run.

Before long she finds herself in England, at a newish estate at Medmenham (which amused me, as it was the site of Sir Francis Dashwood’s wannabe devil worshippers two hundred years before almost to the year, that that is not acknowledged in the book), scrutinizing photographs taken by reconnaissance planes for camouflaged artillery emplacements and munitions factories.

She also sees the results of bombings, which includes the collateral damage: cows and pigs, horses and dogs, and the broken bits of civilians. Florence depicts so vividly the toll Rose and her colleagues their work extracts from them, all in various ways. The characters are varied, the female friendships strong. Rose tumbles into love, or what she thinks is love, as she keeps working around the clock to impress her handsome boss.

The grimness of the war is punctuated by letters going back and forth from home: her parents, her best friend, and her neighbor Charlie Stewart all write, each with distinct voices.

The anxiety as younger brothers volunteer jacks up the tension, especially when the inside details of missions are revealed to the photographers. The suave words of newspapers can’t hide what the remorseless camera eye reveals.

The climactic sequence is a real emotional roller coaster, but Florence writes with grace as well as compassion, and here and there, when needed, just enough of a touch of humor. It’s this insight and grace that made the story so memorable for me—that, and her unerring ear for the idiom of the time, not only Canadian but British from various levels of society.

To wind up, this is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I hope it finds the audience it deserves.