The Light Over London

The Light Over London by Julia Kelly   288 pages

I was so excited when I learned that I had actually won a Goodreads.com giveaway!  I enter those giveways a lot, with little success. But yeah!  It arrived at the perfect time; I had just finished a novel and was trying to figure out what I would read next.

The story has one of my favorite styles: dualing timelines, covering 2017 and 1941. The story opens with Cara Hargraves and her boss, a gruff antiques dealer, appraising an estate in Gloucestershire for a woman who just wants to get rid of everything. Inside a drawer, she finds a book-shaped tin. After prying it open, she discovers a World War II photograph of a woman with the initials L.K. and a diary.

The diary covers little more than a year, from February 21, 1941, until January 5, 1942. What she reads shocks her, making her eager to return the red-bound diary to its owner.

Then the story shifts to 1941 to Cornwall. Louise Keene is nineteen years old, but wants more out of life. Her parents think she should sit around the house and wait for a boy she knows, but barely knows or likes, to return from the war. She meets a handsomely dashing Flight Lieutenant based nearby.

Louise can barely tolerate the dullness of the countryside while a war rages in nearby London. Against her parents’ wishes, she joins up, as a Gunner Girl, a member of the famed Ack-Ack Command, and is stationed as a gunner.

I loved learning about the Gunner Girls and the Ack-Ack Command. I had never heard of these terms before, but basically what they did was watch the English skies for enemy planes. Women weren’t allowed to fire the guns, only help scan the skies and help set up the machinery. Stationed in London, Louise learns, quickly, that the war is far more dangerous than she had ever perceived. She lives for the day when Paul returns and they can be married.

Fast forward to 2017, Cara, really from a divorce, has moved into a new cottage. She hopes to be able to find the person, or her family, to return the diary. Enlisting the aid of her new neighbor, the handsome professor Liam, they begin to search for the rightful proprietor.

The plot was good, a heck of a twist awaits readers, one that I saw only as it happened.  Bravo, Miss Kelly. The two timelines did intersect, but it was rather disappointing. One thing that drove me nuts was all the acronyms that were never explained. For these last two reasons, “The Light Over London,” receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.