The narrative is about three brave women who for very different reasons decided to join the Australian Women's Land Army, they play a vital role helping busy farmers harvest their crops, due to the war there's a huge shortage of male farm labor and food.

Flora Atkins lives with both her father, and her brother Jack, who is classed as medically unfit to fight due to being left deaf in one ear from a childhood illness. Her other brother Harry is overseas fighting for his country and Flora's family are constantly worried about him. Flora's thirty years old, she has looked after her dad and brothers since her mother died when she was fifteen and works at a job where she isn't appreciated, never promoted and paid a pittance. She decides to join the Australian Land Army, she is sent to Mildura to help Charles Nettleford harvest his sultana and currant crop. It's back breaking work, Flora struggles at first but she soon adjusts, Charles is a widower he lives with his mother, he has two little girls Violet and Daisy.

Betty Brower lives in Sydney, she is seventeen and works in Woolworth's. Her best friend and neighbor Michael turns eighteen before her, he decides to join the army and follow in his older brother's Patrick's footsteps. Betty lives with her parents, her parents are teachers, she misses Michael and is very unhappy with her job. She decides to join the Women's Land Army and due to her age she needs her fathers permission to join up. Her parents agree, Betty struggles at first she has never been away from home before, she misses Michael and she cries every night. With support from the older girls and the local community make her and her fellow land girls feel very welcome, she settles in, grows up and matures into a young lady.

Lilian Thomas lives in North Adelaide a very posh suburb, she has no idea what she wants to do with her life and is stuck going to red cross meetings with her mother and learning to type. Lilian lives in the shadow of her older sister Susan who's a doctor in the Australian army and stationed in Egypt. Lilian has been dating David Hogarth for six months when he decides the join the RAAF and train to be a fighter pilot. They decide to get married, much to her mother's horror before he's deployed. David leaves for basic training, Lilian decides the join the Women's Land Army and her parents are horrified. Lilian joins anyway, before she knows it she has her land army kit and is sent off to her first posting. They're sent to pick cherries in Norton Summit, it's a huge shock for Lilian who has never done a days work in her life! Many of the girls she is working with have been maids and she over hears them talking about how much work they had to do, for a ten shillings a week and land girls earned thirty shillings. Lilian's own family has a maid and the she knows the families the girls worked for. Food and board is included as part of the girls pay and they stay in some really interesting places!

As the war drags, the lives of the three women are changed forever, constant worry about loved ones serving overseas takes it's toll, mail can take months to reach them, and they have to work hard to feed the nation. They sometimes worked six days a week, in tough conditions, in the heat, and rain. As time goes on some girls leave to marry or lose loved ones in the war.

The Land Girls takes you on a journey, one that makes you laugh, cry and you understand the sacrifices both men and women made during the Second World War in Australia, and I had no idea about the important role the land girls made towards the war effort. Not only with harvesting food but also flax seed which was used to make a material that was used to make tents and other things the army needed.

As I live in the Adelaide Hills, I know the area well and Victoria Purman has done a brilliant job with her research, her book might be a work of historical fiction, by including real facts about the area at the time makes it into a beautiful rich story full of real history. I loved the book and five stars from me.

I am not sure what to say, other than this is a must read, Victoria Purman has done it again with an amazing story that took me back to World War 2 and let me get to know three wonderful woman who did what they could back home while their men were away, make yourself comfy for this one and have some tissues at the ready.

Flora comes from Melbourne and is the oldest of them and a spinster, she works at an office, looks after her father and brother and her youngest brother is already away fighting, but something happens and Flora joins up with the Land Army.

Betty is the youngest of the girls at seventeen, she lives in Sydney with her parents and works at Woolworths, her best friend is her next door neighbour Michael, when Michael turns eighteen he signs up and Betty decides to do her bit with the Land Army.

Lilian comes from a well to do family in Adelaide, her sister is a Doctor in the army tending soldiers in the Middle East, when she marries her boyfriend David just before he joins up and leaves to train to be a pilot, Lilian joins up as well.

Flora, Betty and Lilian learn a lot in their years in the Land Army, from picking cherries and grapes to harvesting flax and digging up potatoes, but what they learn more is friendship and compassion as they worry about their family and friends fighting overseas. Their years in the Land Army change them all, so much has happened to so many people, there is death and sadness but there is also love and hope for the future that bring them together.

This is a beautifully written story that was obviously so well researched, I cried bucket loads of tears and I smiled as well as I journeyed with Flora, Betty and Lilian and the many other girls we got to know, Kit and Gwen, these woman worked so hard to help Australia and the fighting men it makes me so proud of them. This is a book I highly recommend a must read, and one that will stay with me for a long time to come, thank you MS Purman.

The Land Girls by author Victoria Purman is a rmultifaceted read with many captivating moments throughout the chapters.
Review copy received by Harlequin MIRA via Netgalley

This was a wonderfully written story of love and loss in World War Two. This novel centres on three women who join the Australian Women's Land Army: 30 year old spinster Flora Atkins from Camberwell, Melbourne, 18 year old Betty Brower from Rozelle, Sydney and wealthy Lilian Thomas from Buxton Street in North Adelaide. Each woman has different motivations for joining the Land Army-Flora was angry that her younger brother Jack got a white feather for cowardice because he wasn't serving(Jack has an ear infection which therefore made him medically unfit for duty) and she wants to serve on his behalf to prove the Atkins family are doing their part. Flora's youngest brother, Frank, is already serving in the army. The Atkins family are a very tight knit group after their mother died and the siblings have their father and each other left. Since Frank is serving, Flora looks after Jack and her father John by cooking and tending to the other household duties, as well as maintaining their Victory Garden while juggling her duties at her office job, which she views as dull work. But when her brother gets a white feather, Flora immediately volunteers for the AWLA and goes to countryside Mildura, where she works at the Nettlefold's Two Rivers Farm and picks raisins and currants for harvesting. The author goes into great detail in showing how tiresome and back breaking the work was back then. Little did Flora know how much she would change there at Two Rivers Farm, and how much that place was going to mean a lot to her, more than the work required on the farm. In Sydney, Betty is working at Woolworths in their cosmetics department as a shopgirl, while she watches her best friend Michael Doherty go off to war. Betty wants to be useful for the war effort so she enlists in the AWLA and gets sent to areas like Batlow and Mildura to help out also with picking the produce and sending them off to the drying factory-in order for them to be used to make fruitcakes and other food to send to the troops. Betty is initially homesick but she gets used to the hard but rewarding work on the farmlands. I loved the fact that the author showed how the women used their free time to attend dances hosted by the Red Cross and morning teas at the CWA functions at church, and also writing letters to their family and those dear to them. Now, in Adelaide, Lilian Thomas is from a prominent family living on Buxton Street. Her mother tries to keep her occupied by making her go to secretarial school which Lilian hates. Her mother tries to get her involved in fundraisers and hosting parties at the Red Cross for the troops, but Lilian is just not into it that much. The Thomas family already has a daughter serving overseas, Susan Thomas is a doctor at the Australian General Hospital in the Middle East for the RAMC. Lilian tries to entertain herself by going to dances at the Palais Royal, sewing, but also spending time with her love interest, lawyer David Hogarth. Unfortunately, he is going to enlist in the RAAF and train in Mildura. Now that her sister and love of her life are serving, Lilian wants to escape her overbearing family and the expectations the world has placed upon her so she enlists in the AWLA and does tasks like picking cherries at Mr Playford's orchard in Norton Summit, and then moving onto Port Noarlunga to harvest flax seeds to be used for making thread for parachutes and the canvas used for field hospitals, and then inevitably getting posted to Mildura-she finds purpose, strength and genuine female friendship as she serves. As the Land Girls find pleasure in their backbreaking hard work, as well as contributing to the war effort and finding a close-knit community amongst themselves, they begin to find a deep sense of pride in their roles, as well as a sense of liberation as they are independent. But war is never far away and it touches everyone-so their fears for loved ones such as their sons, husbands, sweethearts, brothers, nephews, parents and neighbours who are all fighting at the front grow larger as no one knows when the end of the war will be in sight as the years pass by. Therefore, the Land Girls hold on to their world and their fragile new-found freedoms. Even if they and every citizen make it through the war unscathed, they will not come through the war unchanged. This was a great novel by Victoria Purman. I loved learning about how the Australian Women's Land Army proved themselves to the menfolk that they can do just as great as a job in farming as their male counterparts. These women struggled through wild weather, soreness and sexism, but they rose up to the challenge and endured. I also learnt how hard farming was as you need to be up before dawn and work all day until the evening.

What a lovely tribute this book is to all the women of the Australian Women’s Land Army. This story will draw you straight into the 1940’s world as we meet three young ladies from very different walks of life living in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. The author’s reference to this era was wonderful and in my mind very accurate to everything I have ever read or watched about this time in our history. You could almost feel the pain and anguish the girls here experienced during this book, with there up and down while doing the part in the war efforts. They wanted to do their part to help both the soldiers and their country so it may enable their loved ones to return safely and sooner.

This is the second book that I have read by this author and I must say I have very much enjoyed them both and look forward to having the time to read more of her wonderful work. I enjoy her style of writing, the characters and the in-depth description she gives to make you immerse yourself into her world.

Flora Thomas lives at home with her father and younger brother a Melbourne suburb with her other brother away fighting in the war. She is in her mid-thirties, a spinster known in her times with a very boring office job. She is drawn to the Land Army after her younger brother is given a White Feather from a stranger on the street. Feeling the need to help in the war in place for her brother Jake who is unfit for service she travels to Mildura to help on a farm picking grapes.

Betty, a 17-year-old lives in Sydney and works as a counter girl at Woolworths which is a job she enjoys. Her best friend is about to turn eighteen soon and he will be off to war, so Betty thinks about joining the Land Army to help and do her part in the war effort. She really wants Michael to come home safe and well.

Lily has been raised in the upper lifestyle of Adelaide with everything she wants or needs. But she is the younger sister to a very talented older sister who is a doctor working abroad in Egypt in the war. She has always felt like she was never as good as her sister, she decides to do her part with the war and the Land Army looks like a way she can do her part. The boy she had been attending some dances and parties with is about to leave to training to become a pilot.

The girls all start this new chapter in their lives and will find their way through the hard work with good new friends and knowing they are doing something other than just sitting by waiting on a letter from their loved ones at war. The girls will connect with each other along the way over the three years this book gives us there journeys.

Will all the pain, grief, loss, hard work, worry and waiting see the girls in a happy place at the end of the war?

Three girls

Three different stories

Three changed lives

Three Journeys

Three love ones at war

Three loves

This is my honest and voluntary review and all my own opinions of this book that I received an ARC copy of off from NetGalley and the publisher.

Three women join the women's land army in Australia during World War 2. The Land Girls introduces the reader to them and by the end of the book, each woman found a place in my heart and my very sincere admiration.

Flora is thirtyish and from Melbourne, she lives with her Dad, a brother who can't go to war (Jack) and Frank who is fighting in the war overseas and they haven't heard from him. A white feather given to her brother Jack on the street one day, decides Flora  to join the Land Girls - her first assignment  is picking grapes - hard work but she meets up with a delightful family. Slowly a relationship develops between Flora and Charles the owner of the farm but she is only there for a few weeks.

Lily is   18  from an Adelaide wealthy family, she has a sister a doctor working in the war overseas but Lily  hasn't found her own niche. She finds it hard to even learn shorthand and typing. She is in love with David who is going off to war. Taking up her courage she too joins the land girls - unusual for some one from such a family. She is sent out to a place north of Adelaide to pick cherries.

Betty is almost 18, friends all her life with Michael next door, she is an only child and she too decides to join Land Girls when Michael joins up in 1942 when he turns 18. She starts this life picking grapes in Mildura, many miles north of Melbourne, on the edge of the outback. She is among 20 other girls. It's hard work and Betty is homesick. One Sunday she meets Flora who gives her words of encouragement, that really help.

I loved the Australian setting, the  realistic painting of what it was like to live in that time during war. The women who joined the land army worked hard, and it changed them in so many ways.  How worrying though for them for the loved ones who fought overseas and often when bad news came, so heart breaking

.Victoria Purman had me fully invested in each woman, each story so real. I loved the way the woman put their hands up and contributed. The way they supported each other and developed such important and memorable friendships.

The Land Girls details perhaps a forgotten or not well known part of Australian history. I did not know that many women during the war served in the Australian Women's Land Army. They kept the country running whilst the men were away at war fighting. It is clear from the three main characters in this novel, that participating in the Land Army was for deeply personal reasons and above all was a great sacrifice. We learn that through Flora, Betty and Lilly, three different young women who become members. Flora is driven by her urge to contribute whilst one brother is away fighting and another is unable. Betty works in Woolworths and wants to do her part whilst her neighbour and friend fights for the country and Lilly hates secretarial school and wants to do something more important. All contribute by working hard and making a difference, but more importantly they grow and develop as women. Victoria Purman keeps it real by ensuring not everyone gets their happy ending. This is a delightful novel full of detail and richly woven characters.

Everytime Victoria Purman releases a new novel, I know I'm going to find great characters; with her historical novels, I know I'm going to learn about a part of Australian history that I had very little knowledge of before picking up her book. In The Land Girls, she draws on the experiences of women from The Women's Land Army as well as those left behind to do the jobs the men have left when they joined the armed forces during WWII, to weave an emotional tale of love, loss and courage.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and learning about this important part of our history. There are three main female charatcers whose lives we follow, Flora, Lily and Betty, I loved each one of them, working with them on the farms, sharing their losses and heartbreak all the while discovering so much about themselves.

My favourite of these characters though, was Flora. I really engaged with her, whether it was because she was older and still searching for her place, her loyalty to her family and those she called friends, or just her wonderful character, I loved the journey that the Land Army took her on. Flora meets Charles during her first posting as a Land Girl and I loved watching the relationship between the two of them grow and change them. I held so much hope for the two of them and the future.

There were many emotional moments throughout this story, as I'm sure you can imagine, happy as well as sad ones.

The work these women did during the war was inspiring and shows just what people can achieve. Without these women filling the places of men, most farms and factories would have gone out of business. I definitely recommend this wonderful novel.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Australia for a digital copy of this novel in return for an honest review.

With war across Europe, Australia’s men and women were joining the cause in droves. Flora’s younger brother Frank was fighting overseas and in Melbourne, she, her father and brother Jack worried constantly. Betty from Sydney worked in Woolworths and her next door neighbour and best friend, Michael joined up, heading overseas. And Lily from Adelaide was being courted by David so when he joined the air force to fight overseas, she wanted to do her bit for the war effort.

The Australian Women’s Land Army were calling for women to help out with the jobs men had always done. Shearing, picking grapes, apples, working on farms with the animals. All three young women – Flora, Betty and Lily – separately decided to become Land Army girls for the duration of the war. And as they worked their various roles in different parts of Australia, they met other women doing the same thing; making dear friends. Along the way, there was heartache and loss, sadness and tragedy – the relentless arrival of the dreaded telegram – but there was also growing maturity, pride in their work and independence among the women.

When Flora was once again at Two Rivers near Mildura, she learned two other Land Girls were arriving to help this season with the grapes. And so she met Betty and Lily. The three girls worked hard – the work was backbreaking, and the heat was never ending – all the while wondering if the war would ever end. And whether their loved ones would come home...

The Land Girls is a poignant story filled with heartache and hope, love and loss, as well as courage, grit and determination. Aussie author Victoria Purman has once again written a well-researched historical novel which I thoroughly enjoyed. I wasn’t aware of the Australian Women’s Land Army and the role the women played during the war. Many of the farms and properties simply wouldn’t have survived without the help of those wonderful women. Highly recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

I have read a few novels now about the Women’s Land Army, but each of these have been set in England, never Australia, so it was a real pleasure to pick up this latest release by Victoria Purman and read all about the marvellous efforts our women made in order to keep our country ticking over while WWII was raging throughout Europe and the Pacific. Australia had quite a substantial Women’s Land Army:

‘Around 6,000 women served in the Australian Women’s Land Army between 1942 and the end of the war. These women left the cities and moved into the country, to farms and orchards, to do the work once done by men. Many stayed on for the duration of the war. It was disbanded on the 31st December, 1945, and women returned to their old lives. After the war, their work and sacrifices were largely ignored and forgotten but they continued to campaign long and hard to have their work recognised. They marched on Anzac Day for the first time in 1991, and in 1994 became eligible for the Civilian Service Medal 1939–1945. On the 20th August, 2012, at a reception at Parliament House, Canberra, the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard presented each surviving member with a certificate and a commemorative brooch to wear. Her comments on the day outlined just how much they had contributed to the war effort.’ – Author notes.

The Land Girls is just the type of historical fiction I enjoy the most. It’s a quiet read in the sense that it’s driven more by the events of history than by a fast paced action filled plot. It’s very much a character study on the three women that steer the narrative, and through walking in their shoes, we are treated to a snapshot of Australian society during the WWII years, in both the city and the country. There is a wealth of detail woven into this novel, it really is a treasure trove, and in less skilled writerly hands, it may have been too much like a history lesson, but with Victoria Purman shaping the story, it was perfectly balanced. There is such a sense of atmosphere to this novel, the reader is really able to get a handle on what life in Australia was like back then. The politeness and reserve that was still in place was captured vividly through the relationships depicted, both working and private. I felt like I was reading about an Australia that was on the cusp of change. So much tragedy had come to pass, with both world wars within a generation of each other, and there was a sense that the idyllic lifestyle that had up until then been enjoyed was rapidly coming to a close. I loved the detail of everything the women did while in the land army. They did all sorts of work, from tending crops to working with livestock and all kinds of factory work – everything. And they travelled great distances to do so, many moving around to follow the crop seasons. It was a remarkable effort, and many women did it for years. I daresay it would have been quite difficult for some to go back to the domestic sphere once the war was over.

‘That August in Batlow, it was colder than July. The apple-tree pruning continued. The Land Army girls’ routine of Friday night dances and Saturday nights at the pictures continued through those winter months, small windows of respite from the hard, physical work and the incessant cold. They’d sung along to Babes on Broadway with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and been scared out of their wits by Apache Trail starring Donna Reed. When the newsreel relayed the latest news from the war, of further Allied gains in France and American bombing in the Philippines, everyone in the theatre stood and sang ‘God Save The King’ and cheered. The girls had marched out of the cinema exhilarated, singing the Andrews Sisters’ ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’ until they forgot the lyrics and botched the harmonies but they didn’t care as they walked the two-and-a-half miles home in the cold.’

There is love and laughter within this novel, pain and grief as well; all coloured with so much realism. Victoria Purman just seems to be going from strength to strength with her historical fiction. Highly recommended for readers who are interested in history with a focus on Australian women.


Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia via NetGalley for providing me with a copy of The Land Girls for review.

By far the best book by this author I have read so far. It is a gem. The cover and the blurb are slightly misleading as they give the impression that the three main characters are friends who work as land girls together. Ms Purman has done something much cleverer than that.

The three main characters, Flora, Betty and Lily come from different parts of Australia and from very different backgrounds. The story is told from each individual's perspective, their reasons for joining the Land Army and their differing experiences in separate places all over the country. Occasionally little coincidences show how their paths almost cross until the end when they come together in one place.

Kudos to the author for the amount of research she must have done to produce this book and how she uses her knowledge to create the perfect atmosphere of Australia in the 1940s. A huge amount of information about historical events comes across in such a natural way as well as an awful lot of geography! Read this book if you want to know more about the war, about life for those who served and those who stayed home, and about farming in all Australia's wonderfully different climates!

Finally I have to admit that I cried more than once! It is a very emotional book which covers many of the different situations ordinary, everyday people had to live through and endure. A warning - the author writes an honest book. In war time people die and sometimes they are the ones you really wanted to live!

I love reading about Australia’s history, but more from a perspective of “what was life like for people living in that time” than “what happened on which date. I also have a fascination for our wartime history. After all, my grandparents served in World War One and my parents in World War Two. These are among the reasons I was so thrilled to receive an ARC of The Land Girls.
This story did not disappoint. Viewed through the eyes of three very different women, mid 1940’s Australia unfolded before me. I could easily imagine the backbreaking effort involved in pulling flax or harvesting grapes and the cuts and scrapes from picking cherries or apples or perhaps pruning trees. It is very clear that this was no stroll through the vegetable patch, but rather serious hard slogging in often unpleasant conditions.
The Land Girls is not just a glimpse at Australian wartime history. There are personal stories interwoven through this book, and Flora, Betty and Lilly are very real people with very real worries, hopes and dreams. The book also takes readers out into the Australian countryside from the Adelaide Hills to Mildura on the banks of the Murray River and Batlow on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range.
The story is well paced allowing readers to absorb the lives of its characters yet move forward to see what will befall them next. I liked that little bits of adversity were dropped onto the pages whenever I was getting comfortable with the setting, ensuring my loyalty to the characters and my enthusiasm to see how things would end.
For anybody looking for a darned good Australian historical fiction with a dash of romance all I can say is look no further. And if you’d just like to get a glimpse of life in wartime Australia but can’t be bothered doing all the research that Victoria Purman has done then this is the book for you. Loved it!

Before this book, I’d come across mentions of land girls a few times - a British TV series I’d added to a streaming queue but never watched, a recent news article - but never knew much past the superficial. While World War II history is a prominent feature in the Australian curriculum, the Australian Women’s Land Army (and the non-military war effort in Australia more generally) never featured much in my history lessons. But it’s an inherently interesting topic: as part of the Australian Women’s Land Army, women from metropolitan areas moved to the country and took up agricultural jobs, compensating for labour shortfalls due to the war.

Firstly, this was a fantastically written book. Not only do the different POV chapters work seamlessly together, but they also show distinct-enough characters and personalities that they’re wholly separate. I personally have no experience of living through a war that threatens home soil, but the depiction of these characters, what they face and how they face it is truly remarkable and relatable. I loved this book - both as a work of historical fiction and as an enjoyable read in general - and sincerely recommend it.

‘The war had touched everyone, changed everything.’

Australia, 1942. War has engulfed both Europe and the Pacific. In Australia, there’s a shortage of male farm labour because many men, deemed not to be in essential industries have joined the armed forces. In this novel, we meet three very different women who join the Australian Women’s Land Army, doing their bit for the war effort.

Flora Atkins is thirty. She lives with her father and her brother Jack and works in an office. Her other brother Harry is serving overseas. Jack is deemed medically unfit for military service, but this doesn’t stop a stranger from giving Jack a white feather. Flora is angered by this and decides to leave her office job and join the Australian Women’s Land Army. Posted to Mildura, Flora meets Betty Brower, a seventeen-year-old former Woolworths shop assistant. Betty, with her parents’ permission, has joined because her best friend and neighbour Michael has joined the Australian Army. The third woman is Lilian Thomas, a well-to-do young woman from Adelaide, who is trying to find her own place in the world, free from the burden of her family’s expectations.

This novel follows the story of each of the three women: their achievements, heartbreaks and hopes. While I found myself most drawn to Flora’s story, I became caught up in the lives of all three. Each of the women will take pride in her new role, each will develop new friendships, new strengths and a broader view of the world. Each will be changed in some way by her experiences: there’s both happiness and heartbreak in these pages.

To write more might ruin the joy of a first-time read.

If you are interested in life in the Australian Women’s Land Army and the vital role it played in Australia during World War II, you may enjoy this novel as much as I did.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

The Land Girls is the third stand-alone novel by best-selling Australian author, Victoria Purman. It’s 1942 and, except for reserved occupations, the young men of Australia have been sucked into the war machine, serving in Europe and Asia. The void this leaves on the country’s farms is a threat to food production, so women step into the breach in the form of the Australian Women’s Land Army: the Land Girls.

The women who step up come from many different backgrounds, and have different reasons for doing so. Young Frank Atkins is serving somewhere in Asia and his brother is unable to, so thirty-year-old Flora Atkins decides to leave the office job where she’s not appreciated to contribute to the war effort.

When her best friend and next-door-neighbour, Michael follows his brother and enlists in the AIF, seventeen-year-old Betty Brower feels she can make a better contribution picking fruit that selling cosmetics in Woolies.

Lilian’s well-to-do mother believes that at eighteen she should be taking more responsibility instead of wasting time at balls and parties. She knows that in her parents’ eyes she’ll never be able to match her sister Susan, an Army doctor in Egypt, but when her sweetheart begins training as an RAAF pilot, she wants to do something more useful than rolling bandages.

The women are provided with uniforms, briefed on how to behave and what is expected of them. They are paid a generous 30 shillings a week on top of meals and board, and generally made welcome into the country towns by residents and farmers who appreciate the sacrifice they have made. This is not exclusively the case: some are unconvinced of their ability and their genuine good intentions.

Despite warnings, many of the Land Girls are dismayed by both how physically exhausting the work is and how homesick they soon are, missing far off friends and family, aching for their sweethearts and husbands fighting in the war, desperate for word of their fate.

While on the land, these women learn a great deal about crop husbandry and about themselves; they attain maturity and self-confidence, they learn to support each other and find friendship, and, occasionally, find love. Many leave with a wholly unexpected love of the countryside.

At a time when, unlike today, communications were anything but instant, when the telephone was not a ubiquitous but a rare thing, Purman demonstrates the importance of letters: letters that brought news both good and bad (although the worst news usually came by telegram); letters from distant loved ones that took weeks, nay months, to arrive, with bits redacted, but letters that reassured the receiver they were still alive, still loving and loved.

Purman’s characters are easy to love and care about. Her story has joy and heartache, but ultimately, it also has hope. Her extensive research is apparent on every page. (A good proportion of the novel is poorly formatted, but this will likely be corrected for the final version and barely affects the reading experience) An interesting and heart-warming read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Harlequin Australia.

I can remember my nan talking about the Land Army and the WAAFs when I was a child, and I thought of her (god bless her soul) as I was reading The Land Girls.

I am on a real historical kick at the moment, and I have been reading a lot of stories set in WW2 to get my fix.

The Land Girls, based on the the Australian Women's Land Army is a beautiful, but at times heartbreaking story of the women who went and worked the land while the men were away during WW2.

It is a beautiful story of strength, of friendship, of the family we make, who are not our blood family.

I may have shed a tear or two as our lovely ladies, from all walks of life, forge such special relationships.

I did the tree change myself from the city to the country a while ago now, so I could feel some of their struggles (though I never had it as bad as these girls did!) especially with isolation.

Once I got into this story, I did not want to put it down. Heartfelt, heartbreaking, but also full of hope and wonder, I felt this story with my whole body.

This was my first Victoria Purman story, but it won't be my last.