Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
DNF at page 200. I really tried to push myself to like it. The characters are hard to keep up with and it is SLOW
Natalie Jenner writes the most beautiful books, they are absolutely huggable! I cried at the end of this book because I did not want it to end. This book brought so many things that I LOVE together in one story...a London bookshop, post WWII setting, female friendships, tea, feminism, BOOKS and beloved characters (including many from her last book The Jane Austen Society). Juliet Stevenson narrates the audio book and she did an amazing job bringing these characters to life. I so wanted to crawl into the story, browse the shelves of Bloomsbury Books and share a cup of tea with the cast of beautiful characters who work there. Thank you so much Natalie for writing another treasure of a book.
I enjoyed this audiobook far more than I expected to. Juliet Stevenson’s narration is outstanding, and I suspect that really helped. She made the cast of so many characters clearly distinct in accent and vocal characterization; it gave them life.
But the novel also won me over more than I anticipated. The three women were interesting in their own ways. (Evie little less so for me. Vivian the most - I connected with her rage. Shocking, I know.) The male characters were also richly drawn, rather than caricatures of institutional sexism. And it was gentle, heartwarming. Sometimes you just need a truly happy ending that still feels earned by the book that came before.
I listened to this right on the heels of Whalebone Theater, deciding to just keep moving chronologically through British history.
And apparently this is second in a series/trilogy. But you absolutely don’t need to have read the first. Evie and her plot were the connective thread from that book, along with some cameo characters. But you didn’t need it.
But the novel also won me over more than I anticipated. The three women were interesting in their own ways. (Evie little less so for me. Vivian the most - I connected with her rage. Shocking, I know.) The male characters were also richly drawn, rather than caricatures of institutional sexism. And it was gentle, heartwarming. Sometimes you just need a truly happy ending that still feels earned by the book that came before.
I listened to this right on the heels of Whalebone Theater, deciding to just keep moving chronologically through British history.
And apparently this is second in a series/trilogy. But you absolutely don’t need to have read the first. Evie and her plot were the connective thread from that book, along with some cameo characters. But you didn’t need it.
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I would have given this book an additional star but it contains one of my biggest pet peeves of fictionalizing real people. It would have been so easy use these real women as inspiration for fictional characters rather than making up a story to use their names. Aside from that I liked this peek into the workings of a bookstore and the development of a friendship between the three main characters.
She had long known the value in being underestimated.
Evie Stone, from Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
Diminutive, quiet, studious and precise, Evie Stone was often overlooked. Vivien stood out with her cats-eye makeup and trendy black sweater and pencil skirt, and she had a sharp tongue and mind. Her upper crust fiancé was killed in the war. Grace was classy and composed, the perfect help-mate at home or at work, her deeper passions hidden under layers of obligation. The men at Bloomsbury Books underestimated these shop girls, learning too late that their male privilege and power had its limits. The women, they discover, and their larger community of female friends from power and wealth, were not to be kept down.
Writing had always been the one safe place where Vivien could think and say whatever she wanted.
Vivian Lowry, from Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
Natalie Jenner’s debut novel The Jane Austen Society was a favorite 2020 read, a balm during an anxious time. The story of diverse people coming together over a love of Austen, forming a community that achieves the remarkable, was comforting and inspiring.
In Bloomsbury Girls, Jenner continues Evie Stone’s story to London. The one-time servant girl in the Chawton Great House, her research skills honed in the Chawton library, she worked her way to being in the first Cambridge class with women allowed to earn a degree. She needed a stipend to continue her work, but her hope is dashed when she loses a fellowship to a man, forcing her to seek employment.
Evie is hired by the bookstore on the basis of a letter of recommendation and her ability to stay calm under duress–which is tested during her interview. Evie has a secret mission: she has discovered that the bookstore has purchased a rare book that she intends to find, an early sci-fi written in 1827 by a woman. If only she can find it and publish it, her career would be started.
Grace’s ideas for improving the shop seemed to do nothing so much as put him on edge.
Grace Perkins, from Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
The women have ideas to improve sales, but the men won’t listen. The women want to promote female writers. But the men don’t agree. It’s a battle of the sexes, but most of all, a battle between the way things have always been done and changing with the times.
The bookstore owner, Lord Baskin, has a soft spot for the store, and for Grace, but has been asked to sell the business to the manager Mr. Dutton and acquisitions manager Frank Allen. Even Alec, head of fiction, has his eye on owning the store. What the men don’t know is that the women have plans of their own.
She had always resented how an adherence to rules and hierarchy served mostly to protect and promote the men of the shop.
from Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
I loved all the characters in the store. There is fussy Mr. Dutton with his list of rules, one of which starts each chapter. There are the women with their dreams and romantic problems. Ash, from India, coping with racism in Britain, unable to find suitable work as a scientist and is sequestered in the bookshop with his entomology slides. We meet all kinds of historical figures, from Daphne du Maurier to Peggy Guggenheim and the Mrs. George Orwell (or, the ‘girl in the fiction department’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four, she notes). Samuel Becket upsets reporters at a reading. The men reminisce, “Remember when Stephen Spender….”
Britain in 1950 is brought to life, the tension between men endeavoring to resurrect the past while the women strive for greater freedom, the sexes in a struggle over the balance of power.
It’s a delightful read, written with humor and love.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Evie Stone, from Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
Diminutive, quiet, studious and precise, Evie Stone was often overlooked. Vivien stood out with her cats-eye makeup and trendy black sweater and pencil skirt, and she had a sharp tongue and mind. Her upper crust fiancé was killed in the war. Grace was classy and composed, the perfect help-mate at home or at work, her deeper passions hidden under layers of obligation. The men at Bloomsbury Books underestimated these shop girls, learning too late that their male privilege and power had its limits. The women, they discover, and their larger community of female friends from power and wealth, were not to be kept down.
Writing had always been the one safe place where Vivien could think and say whatever she wanted.
Vivian Lowry, from Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
Natalie Jenner’s debut novel The Jane Austen Society was a favorite 2020 read, a balm during an anxious time. The story of diverse people coming together over a love of Austen, forming a community that achieves the remarkable, was comforting and inspiring.
In Bloomsbury Girls, Jenner continues Evie Stone’s story to London. The one-time servant girl in the Chawton Great House, her research skills honed in the Chawton library, she worked her way to being in the first Cambridge class with women allowed to earn a degree. She needed a stipend to continue her work, but her hope is dashed when she loses a fellowship to a man, forcing her to seek employment.
Evie is hired by the bookstore on the basis of a letter of recommendation and her ability to stay calm under duress–which is tested during her interview. Evie has a secret mission: she has discovered that the bookstore has purchased a rare book that she intends to find, an early sci-fi written in 1827 by a woman. If only she can find it and publish it, her career would be started.
Grace’s ideas for improving the shop seemed to do nothing so much as put him on edge.
Grace Perkins, from Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
The women have ideas to improve sales, but the men won’t listen. The women want to promote female writers. But the men don’t agree. It’s a battle of the sexes, but most of all, a battle between the way things have always been done and changing with the times.
The bookstore owner, Lord Baskin, has a soft spot for the store, and for Grace, but has been asked to sell the business to the manager Mr. Dutton and acquisitions manager Frank Allen. Even Alec, head of fiction, has his eye on owning the store. What the men don’t know is that the women have plans of their own.
She had always resented how an adherence to rules and hierarchy served mostly to protect and promote the men of the shop.
from Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
I loved all the characters in the store. There is fussy Mr. Dutton with his list of rules, one of which starts each chapter. There are the women with their dreams and romantic problems. Ash, from India, coping with racism in Britain, unable to find suitable work as a scientist and is sequestered in the bookshop with his entomology slides. We meet all kinds of historical figures, from Daphne du Maurier to Peggy Guggenheim and the Mrs. George Orwell (or, the ‘girl in the fiction department’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four, she notes). Samuel Becket upsets reporters at a reading. The men reminisce, “Remember when Stephen Spender….”
Britain in 1950 is brought to life, the tension between men endeavoring to resurrect the past while the women strive for greater freedom, the sexes in a struggle over the balance of power.
It’s a delightful read, written with humor and love.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Would probably give this book more of a 3.8. I did enjoy it. But got bogged down on lots of details that were not that interesting to me. But overall, I really enjoyed the storyline. The story of a male owned, male run bookstore in London recovering from WW2 but struggling to keep up with the times. The three female characters are a delight! And a force to be reckoned with. Definitely won’t appeal to everyone. But a good read.
Bloomsbury Girls was a cozy, satisfying read. Set in a London bookstore post-war, it explores the lives of the staff, particularly the three women that work there. I enjoyed the depth of the three protagonists and the feminist themes running through the book. Jenner includes real historical figures from the time in the story (connected to the bookstore) which led me down some fun wikipedia rabbit holes.
I have not read Jenner’s The Jane Austen Society but would like to now. If you are a historical fiction fan, particularly set around WWII, you will enjoy this charming book!
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy and chance to review.
I have not read Jenner’s The Jane Austen Society but would like to now. If you are a historical fiction fan, particularly set around WWII, you will enjoy this charming book!
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy and chance to review.
medium-paced
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Loveable characters:
Yes
Three women work in a London bookstore in the 1950s. We follow them and the other employees as they take on different roles in the shop, following the illness of the manager. The book deals with sexism, racism and homophobia, while also focusing on the women's love lives. If you are looking for a slow, easy to follow plot where women stand together to fight for more recognition, this is a good one to dive into.