The Light Over London
In 2017 in Barlow, Gloucestershire, a mansion is up for sale. The deceased owner’s grandniece hires an antique dealer. While evaluating the mansion’s contents, the dealer’s assistant, Cara, discovers an anonymous diary written during WWII, and a photograph, initialed “LK,” of a woman in an Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) uniform. A woman in her thirties, Cara is intrigued, for her grandmother had served in the ATS but is secretive about it. The grandniece directs Cara to throw the diary out. Cara keeps it and, assisted by her neighbor, Liam, sets out to research LK and learn about her grandmother’s past.
In 1941 Cornwall, 19-year-old Louise Keene waits for her serviceman suitor, but she falls in love with an RAF officer, Paul. When he is suddenly deployed, Louise sneaks away to London and joins the ATS. She is assigned to an ack-ack unit as a Gunner Girl. During the German bombing raids, Louise works diligently yet yearns to meet Paul again.
Julia Kelly has penned an appealing romance with three storylines: the war years of Louise and Paul, those of Cara’s grandmother, and the present day with Cara and Liam. At the start of the novel, it seems rather odd that the grandniece wants Cara, offhandedly, to dispose of the war diary, which could contain some of her family’s memories, or at least have value as an antique. Readers may be led to believe that this is a part of the plot. The present-day and wartime storylines are narrated in alternating chapters with minimal loss of continuity. The descriptions, particularly of London during the Blitz, are vividly written. There is much information about the operation of the anti-aircraft batteries and the routines of the Gunner Girls. It’s interesting to learn that while women could set up the guns, only men were permitted to fire them!
