The Royal Station Master’s Daughters in Love (The Royal Station Master’s Daughters Series Book 3 of 3)
This is the final part of a trilogy featuring Beatrice, Ada and Jessie, the daughters of Harry Saward, the stationmaster at Wolferton in Norfolk (which served the royal estate at Sandringham).
The year is 1919, but the impact of the First World War still lingers. Both Ada’s husband, and the fiancé of the Saward girls’ cousin, Maria, suffer from PTSD. Other families are affected by the loss of men from the Sandringham Regiment at Gallipoli in 1915. One such is Kitty Willow, who, with her husband unaccounted for, is unable to claim a widow’s pension, and is forced into the workhouse, along with her six children.
This story has its moments of pathos, jeopardy and romantic sentiment. There are serious issues to address. The author clearly has an affection for her subject matter and has been assisted in her research by descendants of the Saward family. The title is somewhat of a misnomer, however, since the ‘love stories’ of Beatrice and Jessie only come to the fore in the closing chapters. The dominant, and most compelling storylines belong to Kitty and Maria.
Although the salient backstory is filled in, this does not really work as a standalone novel. The multiple plotlines and points of view (and in-scene head-hopping) are distracting and sometimes confusing, especially early in the narrative. For much of the novel, the pace feels very slow and disjointed.
There are too many over-elaborate synonyms for ‘said’. When characters ‘bleat’, ‘warble’ or ‘impassion’, this reviewer was inclined to giggle. Some of these words jar in the context of the scene where they appear. Every dropped aitch does not need to be spelt out. Unfortunately, the book is also atrociously edited. Some sentences feel awkward, description can be repetitious, and there are instances of missing punctuation and speech marks, and characters’ names being mixed up.
