📖 Blog Tour ~ Three Cheers for the Shipyard Girls by Nancy Revell

Penguin
31 March 2022

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book
and the invitation to the blog tour

Wedding bells are ringing at long last for Gloria and her soon-to-be husband Jack. But she can't rest until her youngest son is safely home.

Head welder Rosie is delighted her own husband has returned from enemy territory. But the promise of victory brings more change. Her squad has come so far - what will happen when the war ends?

Meanwhile Helen is caught between two men - but must hide her true feelings from the one she loves. Can her fellow women welders help Helen follow her heart?

Only by working together will the Shipyard Girls win the day.

📖 My Review..

Even though victory bells are ringing loud and clear for the Shipyard Girls there's an element of sadness because this is the final part of this epic series of eleven novels which have charted the progress of this stalwart group of women as they survived whatever the war threw at them, whilst at the same time keeping the home fires and the Sunderland shipyards flourishing. In this final novel we meet again with the women who have become such an intrinsic part of the story and hope with the end of the war they can each go on to find the happiness they deserve. 

I think the emotional investment in this series is such that for readers who have followed from the beginning there is a real sense of sadness that the story has come to its natural ending. And what a journey it has been, delighting readers and inspiring a real interest in the north east where the story is set. As always the author writes with real historical knowledge and gives her characters such a sense of their worth that they spring with lively enthusiasm off the page making their stories so hard to resist. Of course, as with any final novel there is a sense of the wrapping up of loose ends.  I was pleased that those who needed to received their comeuppance and that there was resolution for those who needed to move on with their lives. 

Beautifully written and with a real sense of time and place Three Cheers for the Shipyard Girls is a worthy conclusion to this wonderful historical series which has delighted over half a million readers. This fascinating wartime journey with all of the Shipyard Girls has been a joy to read and is definitely a series which will continue to delight for many years to come.

🍵Best read with... a healthy dose of nostalgia and a good strong pot of tea 

About the Author

Nancy Revell is the pen name of writer and journalist Amanda Revell Walton, who has worked for the national press for the past 25 years, providing them with hard-hitting news stories and in-depth features. She has also worked for just about every woman’s magazine, writing amazing and inspirational true life stories.

Nancy Revell is spearheading a campaign to honour the real women of the Sunderland shipyards in her home town with a new public statue that will be displayed within the historic Sunderland Shipyards. Nancy has worked closely with the Sunderland City Council and the Sunderland Soroptimists, a worldwide volunteer service organization for women, and after putting out a call on her own social media channels, Nancy was approached by local artist Rosanne Robertson who has been commissioned to create the statue that will be unveiled later this year.

Sunderland boasted the largest shipyard in Europe during WWII, and produced a quarter of Britain's merchant shipping at the time. When the men went away to war, the courageous Shipyard Girls took up the back breaking work building ships for the British Navy. Due to its size, the Sunderland Shipyards were a key target of Hitler’s Blitzkreig, making the work not only backbreaking but incredibly dangerous. Historians have estimated that without the courageous women working in Sunderlands’ shipyards during the war, WWII could very likely have been lost due to lack of ability to transport troops, provisions and ammunition.

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