The Tobacco Girls. Lizzie Lane. 2021 [January] 318 pages. [Source: Review copy]
First sentence: Slight of stature, dark-haired and dark-eyed, fifteen-year-old Maisie Miles was currently engrossed in a world of her own. Though the newspaper sellers and the wireless shouted warnings of war to come, it meant nothing to her.
Premise/plot: Tobacco Girls is set in England (Bristol to be
precise) at the start of World War II (1939). It follows the adventures
and misadventures of three young women--factory workers all--Maisie
Miles, Phyllis Mason, and Bridget Milligan. Each young woman (the
youngest being Maisie) faces her own difficult struggles and challenges.
Phyllis Mason is engaged to a controlling man she doesn't
really love--or even like. But he is "a catch," (even with a difficult
mother), and her mother is pressuring her to just go with the flow.
Bridget
Milligan is from a large Irish family--she's witnessed the cost of that
large family--and she's questioning if love makes those hardships worth
it.
Maisie Miles has an older brother who looks after her, but,
her mother and father, well, life at home is anything but safe. Her
father is a vile human being, and, her mother is helpless to protect
herself or her daughter. What is her father capable of? What is he not
capable of?
My thoughts: The Tobacco Girls is a historical soap
opera. I sought this one out because of its world war two setting. I
love to read books set during this period. It is very much "women's
fiction." For better or worse. I enjoyed the drama--even when it
bordered slightly on the melodramatic. I did come to care for all the
characters. So much so that I felt like yelling at a few of them when
they got into sticky situations.
It isn't clean nor smutty. The
situations can be quite gritty--perhaps triggering for those who have
lived through some dark stuff--but there's only a handful of scenes that
I would consider bordering on adult.
© 2021 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
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