Review: The Beauty Chorus by Kate Lord Brown

Blurb from the novel:

Romance, glamour and adventure in the skies: an enthralling debut inspired by female pilots in World War Two.  166 women signed up to fly Spitfires and bombers from factories to airfields across England. It was an adventure that would cost many their lives.

New Year's Eve, 1940: Evie Chase, the beautiful debutante daughter of an adoring RAF commander, gazes out at the sky as swing music drifts from the ballroom. With bombs falling nightly in London, she resolves that the coming year will bring more than just dances and tennis matches. She is determined to do her bit for the war effort.

2nd January, 1941:  Evie curses her fashionable heels as they skid on the frozen ground of her local airfield. She is here to volunteer for 'The Beauty Chorus', the female pilots who fly much-needed planes to bases across the country. Soon, she is billeted in a tiny country cottage, sharing with an anxious young mother and a naive teenager.

Thrown together by war, these three very different women soon become friends, confidantes and fellow adventuresses. But as they take to the skies, they will also face hardship, prejudice and tragedy. Can their new-found bond survive their darkest hours?

This was the perfect novel to read in the lead up to VE Day. I had no idea that the ATA existed - so much is made of the battles in Europe and aspects of the Home Front, and rightly so, but even as a History teacher I had never heard of the ATA. The Air Transport Auxiliary was used to take planes in between different factories and maintenance units to have repairs done and guns installed. It was a vital job that freed combat pilots up for more military missions. It was also notably dangerous as the planes without guns could be more easily targeted by the Luftwaffe.

Kate Lord Brown has written such a wonderful tribute to the women of the ATA in the novel. Although the characters are, of course, fictional, the backdrop of the novel is steeped in research. The main three women of the novel are Evie, Megan, and Stella, from completely different backgrounds but with a common desire to serve their country in the ways that they can. There's romance aplenty, mystery and intrigue, as well as tragedy that befalls each of the characters in different ways (I won't give away details here but the tragedies were rendered even more sad by the fact that these are stories that well could have happened in real life). 

I highly recommend this novel to readers of historical fiction, romance, and both. It's a very human and empathetic story at its heart, which we definitely need more of these days. 

Review: The Sideman by Caro Ramsay

Crime fiction is a relatively new genre that I've been reading over the past couple of years, and The Sideman is one of the most complex, detailed, and page-turning examples I've read.

This is the latest in Ramsay's Anderson and Costello series, and I enjoyed it so much I really want to read the back catalogue.

Note: if you read this book, I encourage you to pay attention to the character list at the beginning. I skimmed it but later found I needed to refer to it several times so I could keep track!

The novel begins with an explosive, controversial resignation letter from Costello. She was appalled at the handling of a case that led to the murder of a young boy and his mother and thinks the police wanted too much to believe in George, the husband, to investigate him properly. He has a rock solid alibi but Costello has a hunch that there was more to it, and presumably wants to leave the force so she can investigate vigilante style.

The following 300+ pages has everything you want from a good crime novel. Crosses and double crosses; mysterious characters turning up out of nowhere but who become essential to the story; and an extremely satisfying unraveling and reveal at the end.

Each character is given a good backstory, even the secondary ones. It would be too easy to make characters in a crime novel simply there to serve the plot, sticking out like a giant neon sign, but Ramsay incorporates everyone she needs to in a way that is authentic and serving the plot while not sacrificing characters for the sake of it.

I read this book in about three days - quite a feat considering I have a four year old and a baby (it did involve a couple late nights!). It is the kind of novel that a reader can be occupied by for hours.