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!