Synopsis (as taken from amazon description) is as follows:

We weren’t supposed to be going to the pictures that night. We weren’t even meant to be outside, not in a blackout, and definitely not when German bombs had been falling on London all month like pennies from a jar.

February, 1941. After months of bombing raids in London, twelve-year-old Olive Bradshaw and her little brother Cliff are evacuated to the Devon Coast. The only person with two spare beds is Mr Ephraim, the local lighthouse keeper. But he’s not used to company and he certainly doesn’t want any evacuees.

Desperate to be helpful, Olive becomes his post-girl, carrying secret messages (as she likes to think of the letters) to the villagers. But Olive has a secret of her own. Her older sister Sukie went missing in an air raid, and she’s desperate to discover what happened to her. And then she finds a strange coded not which seems to link Sukie to Devon, and to something dark and impossibly dangerous.

Ability to read – I am sad that I have now read all of her books because I am in love with Emma Carroll’s words, writing technique and characters. This was as easy to read as all her other books and I quickly found myself transported into the story.

Characterisation – I had already been introduced to the characters because I read the books out of order. I believe the characters also appear in ‘When We Were Warriors’ but can’t quite remember if that is the right book. The characters of Olive and Cliff came alive in this story and didn’t buckle under the pressure or emotion of being evacuated to the country. I found Olive to be a very brave character who had enough sense to keep going even with her sister missing. I thought she was fiercely determined to find out what happened and to do her bit to help.

Visualisation – Having previously met the characters, I already had knowledge of the locations used, so, I just built on that to give myself a stronger visual picture.

Uniqueness – I could gush forever about how I love Emma Carroll’s writing style and the stories she creates. I find each novel to be uniquely different from the last and enriched with beautiful characters and moving words.

Hannah xoxo