41. Yours Cheerfully

Yours Cheerfully. (The Emmy Lake Chronicles #2) A.J. Pearce. 2021. 304 pages. [Source: Review copy]

First sentence: As Mr. Collins called a start to the Woman's Friend editorial meeting, to anyone watching, it was a perfectly normal Monday-morning affair.

Premise/plot: Yours Cheerfully is the sequel to Dear Mrs. Bird. Both books are set in London (for the most part) during the Second World War. This book is set in the fall/winter of 1941. Emmy Lake, our heroine, managed to keep her job at the magazine Woman's Friend despite some issues that came to light in the previous book. She spends most of this second book not as an advice columnist (if she still does the advice column, she never once shares the letters) but as a journalist writing a series of stories on women factory workers. She makes friends with a handful of workers. Not just smile and nod acquaintances but get up all in your business friendships. She takes it upon herself to agitate (stir things up) the workers and convince them to risk it all for the chance of better working conditions. This isn't just a story to cover. This becomes a dear and precious cause to her. She even risks missing her own wedding (to a soldier) to cover this story. 

My thoughts: I really did enjoy Dear Mrs. Bird. I did not enjoy Yours Cheerfully nearly as much. I did not feel that there was much further character development. And the relationship development was practically non-existent. True, I think it's the readers who are left behind on this one--not Emmy Lake. She's 100% in love with Charles Collins. Not a doubt in her mind about that. But this reader at least, felt that Emmy and Charles' relationship was a little lacking in development. I never really felt like I got to know Charles. Perhaps the romance is inconsequential. Maybe the book exists not as historical romance per se but as historical fiction with the focus almost exclusively on friendships between the women. That is a distinct possibility. If so, I found these friendships to be a little too insta(nt) for me. Like you take public transit and suddenly become near instant besties with a couple of women sitting near you. Granted, maybe some people do make best friends like that--and accumulate dozens if not hundreds of friends--just that quickly.

I did get some North and South vibes--not in terms of romance--but in terms of an opinionated woman so confident and sure that she had all the answers on how to better run (or manage) a factory.

Maybe Emmy Lake was supposed to come across as fierce and strong and independent. I just thought her pushiness might get the other women into serious trouble. Her "helpfulness" might lead to true destitution for women already living in poverty if she wasn't extremely lucky. 

© 2022 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews