I was wrong.
The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin is not cheesy.
It is, in fact, quite lovely. I must have been in a mid-winter funk when I read it the first time. This time, I was quite taken with it. Now, that said, it is not as strong as The Librarian Spy or The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, or my real favorites, Blackout and All Clear. But, it is absolutely lovely and a fun read that I will re-read again.
This book will satisfy a lot of book lovers and historical fiction readers. It is an interesting WWII London Blitz story that is reasonably well-crafted. Also of note, it is wonderfully good for adult readers without having any eyebrow-raising content. This story is safe to hand to my teen readers, and I think they will really enjoy it.
As much as I am willing to admit that I was wrong about it being cheesy, I was not wrong that it has its weaknesses. The story itself is good in a lovely way, and it made me cry more than once near the end. The author, however, wrote this in such a way that we had to cringe while we guessed which favorite authors she was borrowing from.
Grace Bennett and her best friend Viv are from a farm community, but they have just arrived in London in 1939. Grace’s father died in the First World War, and her mother died recently from a prolonged illness. Before the story begins, Grace learned that, in fact, her uncle owned the store and home that Grace thought belonged to her mother. Honestly, it feels a bit like the opening to Sense and Sensibility. Grace is evicted, by her brother’s wife, from the only home she has known, and Grace and Viv head to London to start anew. There, they move in with Grace’s mother’s best friend, Mrs. Weatherford.
Despite never having been a reader, through Mrs. Weatherford’s help, Grace gets a short-term job in a bookshop. There, she meets the man of her dreams who, of course, is whisked off to war. She also meets a mentor who becomes like a father to her who resists liking her because of her lack of love for books and her strong resemblance to his deceased daughter. Naturally, through the influence of her dashing engineer-turned-soldier (who, of course, has some kind of top-secret role in the war), Grace becomes a reader. This is the stuff that drove me nuts on my first reading but wasn’t so maddening on the second.
The reason I did, in fact, fall in love with the story is because, when Martin forgot she was a Harlequin romance author and just developed her historical fiction storytelling, the story took off and became quite interesting. I have read a great number of WWII stories set amidst bombings, fire wardens, and rationing, but this one took on the flavor of something like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or Blackout. The story genuinely stopped being about the facts of the Blitz and became about the people who were living (or dying) during the Blitz.
This story has its share of suffering and loss (some unexpected), but it also has those perfectly human stories of survival and triumph. As she says towards the end, the crowd cheered louder when the Princess appeared on the balcony in her uniform, because it was a sign that Britain did, in fact, take it. (Citing the war-time slogan that “Britain can take it.”)
The story moves quickly, is interesting, and is enjoyable. The romance is okay, and is not the selling point of the story overall. I am delighted that my teen readers can read this and likely will love it. I plan to offer it to them first, and then let them really love Blackout and All Clear and The Librarian Spy. I admit, I am now very curious about her book, The Keeper of Hidden Books. I will report back if I read it.