Dear Mrs. Bird

My full review is here: https://literaryquicksand.com/2021/09/review-dear-mrs-bird-and-yours-cheerfully-by-a-j-pearce/

When I found out I would be able to receive an ARC of Yours Cheerfully in exchange for an honest review, I decided that I'd read Dear Mrs. Bird first. Although it's possible for Yours Cheerfully to stand alone, I definitely think reading them in order helped me enjoy the second one more. Although it goes over some of the big points of what happened in Mrs. Bird, I'm glad I read it first.

When I started Dear Mrs. Bird, I had a little bit of a hard time at first getting into the writing style. It's different than what I've read in historical fiction before. The author chooses to capitalize some things, and that's a style that put me off a little. For instance, Emmy might explain something as “having become Quite the Big Thing.” However, as I kept reading, I got more used to it and it didn't bother me quite so much. Still, the grammarian in me had kind of a hard time!

The plot was really light to begin with, but it got deeper and less fluffy for sure. Still, even when the subject matter got heavy with war fallout, Emmy is so good-natured and talks in such a...sweet? way that it's heavy without feeling too gloomy.

Overall, I found Dear Mrs. Bird light, yet it tackles difficult subject matter. The portrayal of friendship was so heartwarming, it was just a fun read. I gave it 4.5 stars overall.