Dear Mrs Bird review: A wartime heart warmer

I was on my lunch break at work (I call it a lunch break, but it's more like stretching my legs for five minutes just to keep my blood circulating before I'm forced back into my desk) when I picked up A. J. Pearce's debut novel, Dear Mrs Bird, in a WH Smith at Victoria Station.

I briefly read the back and the first few pages and instantly felt like I was reading about myself...except I was in 1940.

Emmeline Lake is a journalist. Well, at least she wants to be. It's the height of the Second World War, London is being obliterated and the women on the home front are doing all the can to help with the war effort. Emmeline, with high ambitions, decides she wants to be a war correspondent. She wants to be on the fighting grounds - reporting the important information back to London, and pulling off some of the most important and historical journalistic work.

However, Emmeline gets stuck at a woman's magazines, sorting through agony aunt letters for Mrs Bird - who responds to each letter with brutal advice.

I can sympathise with Emmeline - I remember when I was 17 at my first interview to become a journalist. I expressed how keen I was to write about technology and science. However, the interviewer took one look at my vintage pink heels and said 'maybe you'd be better suited on beauty?'.

Frustrated but with a good attitude none-the-less, Emmeline persists - setting the tone for the stiff upper lip of British wartime.

Among her career woes is her lifelong friend Bunty, who navigates with her through the annoyance of Nazi bombings (yes, I say annoyance, because instead of being struck by terror and fear, it seems the women treat the attacks as nothing more than a male inconvenience).

While shuffling through the letters sent to Mrs Bird, Emmeline realises how much some women are desperate for help. They miss their husbands, they've fallen in love with a foreign man, they're unexpectedly pregnant, they're grieving, they're guilty and sunken. Unfortunately, Mrs Bird has no interest in helping these women. She's much rather answer letters about what the weather forecast may be like for the next few weeks.

Emmeline decided if Mrs Bird won't answer the cries of British women, then she will.

A jolly good fun read, that will leave you with a tremendous vocabulary - you'll be practically ready to audition for Call The Midwife.

The only downside is how repetitive the plot can be - and the excessive use of CAPITAL LETTERS THAT MADE ME FEEL VERBALLY ATTACKED WHILE READING ON MY WAY TO WORK. However, I learned a lot about the social interactions and how bloody hard women worked during the war.

The Sunday Times bestseller is available on Amazon. If you decide to read it, don't get too downhearted about the abrupt ending - as A. J. Pearce is currently working on a sequel.