The Victory Garden offers so many things - a small glimpse into the lives of the land girls during WWI, Emily’s journey of love and loss with an Australian pilot, and her finding a place to belong thanks to a lot of help from new friends and an old journal. Historical fiction with the promise of an old journal is one of my favorite things.
I really enjoyed the friendships in this book. Thanks to her gig as a land girl, Emily makes new and lasting friendships with other land girls and also, rather surprisingly, Lady Charlton, who owns a large estate that Emily initially works as a land girl. She feels such a strong connection to both Lady Charlton and her estate she decides to return when her life dramatically changes and she fears she doesn’t have a home to return to.
I was surprised by the ending, which is always delightful, even when the surprise isn’t delightful. At the end of the book something unexpected happens with her parents, and I was initially a little cross about it. But after I thought about it for a few days, I decided it was the kind of surprise I could live with. I appreciated the author sneaking in a few surprises like this and was impressed with how well she grew her characters. Though every character is affected by the war in some way and there is a lot of heartache in these pages, Victory Garden ends on a hopeful note, and Emily discovers a lot about herself and where she belongs.
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