And yet another book review!!!

FROM GUERNSEY WITH LOVE,

Don't get me wrong....this is a nice, little book to curl up with and read on a cold winter's day. Enough reviewers have already given synopses of the story of the German occupation of this picturesque island during WWII, so I'll skip that part. Suffice it to say, it's an enjoyable, quick read with real life characters that are very endearing. So why not five stars from me?

I think I started and put this book down at least five times. Each time I got bored with it. At this point, I had only gotten to about page 50. When I finally decided to push ahead and finish it some weeks later, I had to reread those fifty pages all over again just to get the characters sorted out. At the beginning of the book, it's hard to remember the relationship between the letter writers -- Sidney (publisher) and Juliet (author) and Susan (publicist) and Sophie (Sidney's sister and Juliet's best friend). I kept forgetting who was who. Then when Juliet started corresponding with the residents of Guernsey, I knew I would be totally lost if I did not go back and get all of these characters straight in my head. Once I did this, it was smooth sailing until the end.

I admit to enjoying epistolary novels because I like the way the story flows. What I couldn't understand about this one was how a letter written on the 23rd of a given month could be received in time for the recipient to respond by the 24th of that same month given the fact that the recipient was in another town or country. Even our postal service now cannot perform that miracle so I found it hard to believe this possible in post WWII. Guernsey reminded me of locales in England written about by authors like Rosamunde Pilcher. As I read more and more about the descriptions of the island, I actually felt I was reading either a book by Pilcher or one by Maeve Binchy.

I certainly don't want to turn anyone away from reading this novel. I just think with all the hoopla surrounding it, my expectations were set at a much higher level than could have possibly been achieved by this author. If you, like myself, are a lover of epistolary novels, some of my favorites are 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff and These Is My Words by Nancy E. Turner. There's nothing like reading someone's back and forth correspondence or writings in one's diary to really get to know them . In this regard, the author was quite successful as I really got a good sense of what the main character, Juliet, was all about. And all in all, it did make me want to visit this tiny little place in history.

As with many books set in a time or place I'm unfamiliar with, I found myself doing so much research about Guernsey and it's inhabitants during the war. On this subject, the book did do justice to this place in time and did open my eyes to a world I'd known little about. One interesting tidbit I did find out was that in 1855, Victor Hugo found sanctuary on the Isle of Guernsey while fleeing political persecution. I've also recently added the DVD of Island At War to my Netflix queue. This is a BBC series of a fictional Channel Island during this time period.

So I'd say lower your expectations a bit and you'll probably enjoy it more than I did.

4 out of 5 stars