Friday Recommends

Friday again, and it's time for my choice of book for Friday recommends...

This is an exciting book blog hop that book bloggers can take part in once a week to share with their followers, the books that they most recommend reading!

The rules for Friday Recommends are:

Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.

Pick a book that you've read, and have enjoyed enough to recommend to other readers. It can be a book you've read recently, or a book you read years ago - it's up to you - but make sure you tell us why you love the book (like a mini review). You make the post as long or as short as you like.

Visit the other blogs and enjoy!

My Friday recommended read this week is a book I featured on wishlist Wednesday back in January.

My thanks to NetGalley for an advance e-copy of this book to review on behalf of Random House.

Next to Love

by

Ellen Feldman

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My 5***** Review

In a small town in Massachusetts, three women, Grace, Babe and Millie are bonded by friendship. Together they share the minutiae their lives, and find comfort in shared intimacies, and security in the warmth of familiarity.

However, war is looming and when the US involvement in WW2, takes away their young men, the women must learn to function in a very different world. Grace working in the telegraph office greets bad news every day, but can never prepare herself for the effect of loss on a large scale. Millie and Babe, both young mothers, must learn to accept what fate holds in store for them, as each of them face some hard choices in the difficult times ahead. As some of the men return from the battle fields of Europe, the women must relinquish their independence, but subservience is a price too high to pay for some of the women.

Cleverly divided into distinct sections and spanning the years 1944 - 1964, this beautifully written story captures your imagination from the very beginning, the richness of the narrative captures the warmth of friendship, but never fails to address the darker issues involved in racial conflict and civil unrest.

The overall theme of endurance in the face of adversity is expertly explored, and the story, in the hands of such a talented and committed writer, is a joy to read. 

There are several covers available for this book

  

Ellen Feldman is the author of several books and lives in New York