MY STORY: WWII

It's been over two years, but I'm finally finishing my work on the My Story series. I've ordered two books that I thought I had, but I think they were lost in the mail after the hurricane and never arrived. (ETA: I wrote this back when I started this post a few months ago. All the books arrived.)

This one I did read back in 2018, but I've forgotten it. The war hadn't begun yet, but this is definitely the batch of reviews where this belongs. 

Most of the book takes place in England just following the daily life of 15-year-old Ellie. She's a swimmer and goes to a nice school. She's not quite posh level, but close. Her best friend is Jewish, so you see hints of things beginning and they hit close to home for Ellie thanks to Sarah being her best friend. 

The girls don't make it to the Olympics to compete, but they're included in some sort of demonstration event and go along. Once there, they really don't care for the accommodations or what they're seeing in Germany. Ellie is deliberately provocative with some Hitler Youth boys during a party they're forced to attend. Their guide Elke doesn't like this but ends up bringing the girls each a box of chocolates before their event. Sarah eats some, Ellie does not, and Sarah becomes too ill to compete. The question of whether or not Elke poisoned her is never answered, though Elke is not seen again. Sarah tells Ellie to go compete, though Ellie herself has mixed feelings about it. She ends her diary without telling what happened, though four years later, she picks it back up and writes an entry about what happened that day (she placed second and her family ended up rescuing Sarah's relatives and bringing them home to London) and what she'd been doing since. She and Sarah both gave up swimming and Ellie is now working with the RAF. 

I enjoyed this one because it was a different story than I've read before. A lot of the books I'm about to read are going to be your typical wartime fare, but not this one. My biggest issue is that somehow at least one page is missing! The book goes from page 111 to 112 correctly, but it's very obvious that something happened and that page or two is missing from the book. It's a very odd error and frustrating. My copy has water damage, so I may pick up another sometime and see if it's incomplete, too, or if I'll finally know what happened with Goebbels and Riefenstahl at the party. 

This one is different than my other war books. It follows a young Polish girl on her journey across Europe as she and her parents flee from the Nazis. First, they go to Paris then Nice then into the mountains. Each place they spend years or months, so much time passes through the entire book. There's a two-year gap after her mother's death in between her two diaries. She writes letters set in 1948 before, between and after her two diaries to explain the setting to the friend she's sending them to. 

I enjoyed this a lot, even though the subject matter is always difficult. It was well-written, aside from a few odd technical errors these books tend to have, and engaging. 

Wartime Princess is the diary of Margaret Rose, the younger sister of the woman who would become Queen Elizabeth II. This is an interesting read, because, like the previous book, it's not a topic I've read about before. However, it struggles from using Margaret as the point of view. The story is really about Elizabeth, but she's very distant. It would have been better from her own point of view, but with her still living, I'm not sure that would ever be feasible. It also suffers because they simply tried to cover too much time. Diary entries are frequently once a month and time passes very quickly, even though the book is longer than your typical My Story. So you've got a distant main character that's not the PoV plus time flying by making details seem too few. To add to that, it's hard to keep track of the year, because each entry is only marked with the month and day. When you've got a book covering so many years, you really need to keep track of them! I think this thing covers eight years. That's way longer than your typical kids' historical fiction, so having the year on each entry would have helped a lot. 

This one's title says it all. 19-year-old Kitty is a volunteer Red Cross nurse at a British hospital during the war. Unlike a lot of these war ones, there's no real romance tied in here. She's writing to a pilot, but realizes she has no feelings for him. There are hints of something between her and a younger doctor, but anything would be far in the future. The book is almost entirely medical experiences, which worsen as the months pass, especially after Dunkirk. 

Kitty is taking care of patients that can't be moved during an air raid and suffers burns on her hands while saving the life of one of them. She's sent home until she's healed, but she knows her life is as a nurse and vows to return.

This one is set in France with a French girl acting as a messenger for her small town's Resistance group. There's a lot of action, as the battles are taking place right there. It was interesting and pretty good.

Fighter pilot talks about being a fighter pilot. 

That's it. That's the book.

It's not bad. It's just not great either. Not much range in subject matter.

Gah, here's where I got sidetracked again. Some of these historical review posts end up being written over months or sometimes longer because I get so easily sidetracked from the reread. 

So I finished this one probably months ago and now have no recollection of it. Dangit. Just read a summary on Amazon and yeah, it was your basic Blitz story with the bombings, shelters, older brothers dying in battle, and being sent away for evacuation. The main difference is that Edie here realizes she and her younger brother are being abused by their so-called hosts, so she manages to get them back home. 

 

Kid goes into the navy to hopefully get revenge on the German U-Boat captain who killed some of his merchantman father's crew and endangered his father's life. This one is surprising well-written and engaging though. I really enjoyed it as these boys go into war stories go.

This one's about a French teen who ends up joining the Resistance and helps smuggle spies and Allies out of occupied France. Pretty decent. I like ones like these more than all the actual fighting. 

Mechanic teen joins the army as an engineer, which turns out to be someone who defuses bombs basically. And it's off to the North African front. I feel like this one was way heavier on the info than the characterization. 

I love when these are linked. The main character here is a descendant of Michael Pope, who was the main of the Crimean War book. 

This one starts out slow and its only real interest is that the main is an officer, so it's from a lesser-seen point of view. But once they hit the beach, the action picks up and it gets really good. There's even a very brief supernatural moment that isn't typically found in these types of historical fiction books, but it works. 

This one had a lot of the same elements of Spy Smuggler only it was from the point of view of the spy. The main is a French-born half-English half-French girl who loses both parents in the war. Her mother in the blitz, her father to torture as he was Resistance. When given the option to help, she takes it. The book was interesting, but I wish there was more of it. It could have been three times as long and gone into more detail about her training. As it was, the training felt rushed and then the mission felt rushed. I enjoyed it, but it could have been a lot longer and better for it. 

London Stories is an epic anthology that ties together the history of London across twelve different time periods. I really enjoyed this one. I wish they'd done more like it! 

And so that finally wraps up my My Story reread. It's taken me years to get this done. 

MY STORY: WWI

Oh, boy, it's war books. There's a reason I took a long break from my My Story reread. My last review for this series was December 31st of last year. I know I got distracted with the American Girl History Mysteries, too, amongst other things, but now I'm finally looking to get these done. I've ordered the last two I was missing and added a third I hadn't even known existed until I searched for cover images for one of these books.

There is an enormous disparity between the books for WWI and those for WWII. I have three books here for WWI. Three. How many are there for WWII, you ask?

THIRTEEN. The three I have coming are all WWII.

Now you guys know I don't care for war books. Guy usually gets it into his head that he and his buddy are gonna run off to the front and win the war. Buddy dies. Guy comes home sad. Sometimes there's a girl.

Trenches is just like that. Except Billy doesn't get to stay with his childhood buddy, because Billy knows how to run a telegraph. So he becomes one of the telegraph guys and occasionally sees his pal. Then one day he learns his friend was court martialed and shot because he wouldn't follow his officer's idiot orders. You see, a lot of the officers weren't trained military men that earned their rank. Nope. They were rich assholes who knew nothing and only got rank because of their money/social status. Trenches was a decent book, though it suffered from the usual formulaic boringness of these war books. It held my attention in some places, but not all.

Flying Ace I liked better, because Jack Fairfax is actually from such a wealthy family that his dad is a lord. He bucks tradition and becomes a pilot instead of a cavalryman, upsetting his father. But his older bro's already over at the front, so why not do something different? Jack's a likeable character. He's the funny, reckless daredevil sort of rich kid, not the uppity type.

Jack and his friend get more characterization than the boys in Trenches so you care about them more. And I enjoyed their rivalry with German flying ace Von Klempter. You can guess what goes on there. Von Klempter ends up killing Jack's friend and Jack gets revenge. Formulaic, yes, but I think better written than several of the others.

Oh, hooray, a girl! This one's pretty decent. Daphne "Daffy" Rowntree is another wealthy character. Her father is killed in the war. Then her brother goes over and disappears. Her mother, who earns a living with her paintings, goes a bit off and starts putting fairies in all her work, acting like they're real creatures. Daffy is frustrating at first, because she's so utterly spoiled and naive, but she slowly grows as a character when she becomes an ambulance driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.

Once over in France, Daffy has a load of new experiences like cleaning an engine and doing dishes. She meets a guy and there's a bit of drama there. She gets shot protecting a dog that reminds her of her dog at home, not realizing it's a very important messenger dog. So she's sent home, her guy finds her, they fix their problem, and it seems like everyone's going to be okay. Her mom's improving, even though it's become clear they're never going to learn what happened to the brother.

Definitely not a bad one. I liked learning about all the FANY ladies had to do and what they went through.

So next up is WWII. I'm not sure when I'll tackle them, because I'll likely read a lot while this hurricane is going on and we're probably going to be without power. They'll also be out of order, because I've got the 3 that aren't here yet. But soon enough, this reread will be done!

MY STORY: 1800s Part 2

I took a break from my My Story reread awhile back and did American Diaries in its place. Now with those books finished, it's time to return to the UK's answer to Dear America.

I started Crystal Palace before the break, got a few entries in and was done. I reread the early entries, then made myself finish the book this time. I don't care for this one, because it's not very historical. There are some details about the building of the Crystal Palace in there, but most of it is drama amongst one household of a wealthy family and their staff. I could only take so much of the son being a complete douche.

Crimea is interesting as the war books go, because it goes into the training for a drummer/bugler and it doesn't actually spend too much time on the details of fighting. Everything is seen more at a distance and a good chunk is devoted to just how shitty conditions were for these poor guys. I liked the bit about the Charge of the Light Brigade. I mean, the poem's better, of course, but it was nice to see the historical context behind it in more detail.

I think this is one of the best boys' books. It's so nice to get out of Europe for a change! Lots of action in this one, lots of spying and lots of politics. It's a really interesting read and I recommend it. The Rani of Jhansi was badass and amazing.

I feel like Sweep's Boy is a deceptive title, because he works as a chimney sweep for like three chapters. Then he's a thief. Then he escapes from prison. Then he's with a band of kids living on their own on a rooftop. Then he's a Barnardo boy. It's a good exciting story, but another title would have been better for the story.

The diary of an upper class girl going with her mother to the local workhouse, because her mom's on the Board of Guardians. Edith's a bit naive and spoiled, but she's still very likeable. The other characters are good, too. I like Rosie a lot. Well-written and a nice change of pace from the very fast-paced, action-packed previous two.

MY STORY: Tudor

I zipped through the Tudor/Elizabethan books over the past few days.

Lady Jane Grey is not one of my favorite subjects to begin with, but add to that a heaping helping of abusive parents and this book was painful to read. I felt like it went on too long but the entries kept jumping ahead in time and it also felt like it wasn't telling the whole story. Not the best book I've read about her.

Bloody Tower covers a similar time period. Tilly is the daughter of the Tower's doctor, so she's right there for a lot of the action, but as a commoner, she's a better character. The book covers the death of Edward, the turmoil with Lady Jane Grey, Mary's bloody rule, and finally ends with Elizabeth in power at last.

My only real complaint about it is that once again, we've got abusive parents. Not her father so much, but her mother "boxes her ears" on multiple occasions.

To Kill a Queen continues the story with Tilly's daughter as the diary author.

Tilly has married a nobleman who's in mysterious service to Queen Elizabeth. Kitty (Catherine) is the oldest daughter of the family, but she has older and younger siblings.

The family is right in the middle of the plot to kill Elizabeth, only Tilly's just slowly piecing everything together. One of her elder brothers made friends with Anthony Babington, who was one of the masterminds behind a plot to kill Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots.

It's an exciting story and pretty fast-paced, although I was saddened to see that Tilly didn't learn a thing from her mother and has boxed her daughter's ears at some point.

What is it with abusive parents? Can't these authors write something decent?

Armada at least has a father that's only verbally abusive and that's reconciled a bit at the end.

It's a ship book. Nothing new here really. Asshole crew member that Thomas has a problem with. Ship terminology. Battles. The same old same old.

But seriously, three different authors and four different books, and every one has at least one abusive parent incident. Blech!

MY STORY: Romans and Britons and Vikings (oh, my)

This final trio of ancient world books does its job well. They read like a story, but also have a lot of historical detail included.

Claudia's book is set in Pompeii a short while before the inevitable eruption. She's what I'd call Roman middle class. She's not an aristocrat, but her family is wealthy. Her father is an ex-slave who made his fortune by baking. Her mother is from Egypt, which is pretty cool, but I wish Reid had done more with. The book gives an interesting look at the life of a middle class Roman teenager as well as what happens in the face of a natural disaster.

I have a different cover for Roman Invasion, but this is my preferred cover style, so I'll be posting these whenever I can.

Bran is taken captive along with his mother, younger sister and three cousins. The older male cousins are shipped off to Rome, likely to die in the arenas. Bran is sent with thousands of Roman soldiers to work on road construction. The threat hangs over his head that if he tries to escape or if his people attack, his mother and sister will be killed.

Bran is put in the charge of the Greek surveyor and his nephew, who's around Bran's age. The nephew was born unable to vocalize anything, so he's a different character than you'd expect to see. His disability is actually key to why the surveyor is there, which is explained in the book.

This book gives you a good idea of how the Roman army works and how the Roman empire has grown so much so successfully. It also has insights into the ways of the Briton peoples, although you learn more about the Romans than about them, which is a bit odd, considering Bran is Briton.

Viking Blood is another good one. A good story wrapped in information about the Viking society and especially loads of good Norse mythology. The text frequently stops to tell a myth, which is written in a different font.

I liked all of the characters in these three books. Definitely a step up from the Egyptian ones!

Next up is Agincourt and then we move into several books about the Tudors, which I'm excited to reread, and in one case, read for the first time.

MY STORY: Ancient Egypt

My Story is the UK's version of Dear America. The main differences, aside from the obvious, are that both the girl and boy books are in one series and that some of the books are in diary form and some are more typical chapters. There does seem to be a My Royal Story division, but that only comes with the later additions. Also, there is some overlap with Dear America and the Royal Diaries. My Story includes some of the books written for DA and Royal Diaries.

There are a lot of these books with multiple cover styles. This one to the left is one of the newer ones. I prefer the look of the older covers myself, but it won't be until the 6th book that I can point that out with an accompanying photo. The five oldest books going in historical order all have the newer white covers.

Pyramid of Secrets is about an Egyptian orphan boy who lived during the building of the pyramids of Giza. Khufu's is finished and he's deceased, but the boy and his uncle are working on Khafre's. The boy's father was killed in an accident while building the pyramids, so he bears a grudge against the entire process, which makes him an easy target to be used by some prisoners also in the working camps.

This book was well-written and seemingly well-researched. I don't remember any glaring errors. It gives a nice idea of what it was like during these building projects and like Maia's book from my previous review, you get a glimpse of Ancient Egyptian daily life for non-royals.

Princess of Egypt, despite the rather boring cover line, is the diary of Hatshepsut when she was about 14. This is not just any Egyptian girl. I haven't read this in years, but it annoys me just as much as I remember.

You see, the author uses a lot of British slang and modern phrasings that pull you into today and don't leave you steeped in ancient Egypt. "Mum" was used and I swear "chap" was in there. And she actually counted "Eeny meeny miny mo" and said "puh-lease." Hatshepsut also goes by the nickname Asha, which there is absolutely no record of and I think dumbs down her character even more than the language of the book already does. And Thutmose II is portrayed as a complete drunken idiot, which does him disservice.

This one really is not worth reading. The plot is your stereotypical evil vizier fare and it really does not teach anything about Egypt other books don't handle better. It's sad that Hatshepsut's one entry into all these historical fiction series I read is complete shit.