This is a Second World War book. It was quite average compared to others that I have read.
It was very superficial though and didn’t really go into detail.
An ok book

This was a brilliant read and is being featured on my blog for my quick star reviews feature, which I have created on my blog so I can catch up with all the books I have read and therefore review.
See www.chellsandbooks.wordpress.com.

Evelyn’s engaged to serious Ron, when he sends her a letter saying he’s found someone else and she’s rather relieved. Evelyn's bored at home cooking and cleaning and she decides to help the war effort. Evelyn goes to the Labour Exchange for an interview and signs up to work as a member of the construction crew on the Waterloo Bridge and joins her sister Sylvie.

Gwen’s young son Johnny is tragically killed during an air raid, and her husband George sends their two other children Ruth and Will to safety in Wales. George works for the railways, he’s busy, often away working, and at home Gwen’s days are long and she misses her children. Her friend and neighbor Betty suggests she finds a job, and she starts work as a construction worker on the new bridge. Her work partner is Evelyn, she has no idea why Gwen is so quiet and she continues to chat and be friendly towards grieving Gwen.

Joan's a gifted violinist, her mother is extremely controlling and pushes her daughter into having music lessons. Joan’s flattered by the attention of Sir Ralph Myers, when the relationship ends badly, Joan can’t stand her mother’s attitude, she leaves home, moves into a boarding house, starts working on the Waterloo Bridge and plans to never play the violin again.

Evelyn, Gwen and Joan come from very different back grounds, due to the labour shortage in England during WW II, they find themselves part of the construction crew building the Waterloo Bridge that will link the North and South of London. Through all the ups and downs the women stick together, become friends, and when the bridge has it's grand opening ceremony and they can take pride in what they achieved together.
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, a story about the struggles of working women during WW II and how they supported each other and three stars from me.

★★★ 2.5 stars (rounded up)

I love historical fiction particularly those set in the WW1 or WW2 eras, and the years in between. Needless to say, I was excited at the prospect of reading this book with something of a different backdrop. THE WOMEN OF WATERLOO BRIDGE is a tale of three women who helped make history in the construction of the iconic structure when so many men were off fighting the war.

December 1940: The story begins during the Blitz with Evelyn, closely followed by Gwen and then Joan. Each woman has a different story filled with heartache, loss and struggles. It was a dark time for Londoners as Hitler's Luftwaffe stormed the capital day and night for 57 days straight. I will never be able to imagine the terror felt by those people - women and children - at such a time. As each of them were confronted with their own hardships, they then found themselves faced with new challenges and subsequently a new purpose in life.

First, we meet Evelyn Draper who lives with her her father and her sister Sylvie. Evelyn had been a school teacher but had left in the wake of becoming engaged to Ron, who was away training to do his bit for the war, as married women were not permitted to work in those days. Feeling at a bit of a loose end what with Ron away and no job, Evelyn's days basically consisted of cooking for her sister and father and cleaning their house. In preparation for her job as "Mrs Ron" perhaps? Evelyn wasn't sure, but she wasn't satisfied with just that. Sylvie tried coaxing Evelyn out nightly on her jaunts to various dance halls and nigh clubs, but she usually just contended herself with staying in with her father or writing to Ron.

But when Ron writes to her and breaks off their engagement, Evelyn thought she would be distraught but instead found herself feeling relieved. She began going out on the town with Sylvie and started enjoying herself dancing the night away. But still she wanted more. And so, after seeing an advertisement, she signs up for construction work on Waterloo Bridge

Gwen Gregson is a mother of three - Johnny, Will and Ruth - and married to George who works on the railways. During a particularly harsh night of bombing, Gwen huddles her three children into the Anderson shelter out the back before George pokes his head in to let her know it's a bad night out there and all hands on deck are needed. As she bids her husband a safe goodnight, she turns to find her eldest boy Johnny hurriedly dressing and stating he was going to help his dad. Gwen pleaded with Johnny to stay and remain safe but the boy disappeared into the night. Leaving her remaining two children in the safety of the shelter, she hurries off into the night in search her son, calling his name at every corner. But to no avail. Until she sees her husband's bulky form emerge from the smoky remains of a building with the lifeless body of her son in his arms.

Gwen's life changed that December night as a part of her had died when Johnny took his last breath. In the ensuing weeks, George sent their remaining two children to the countryside in Wales for safety, leaving her alone in a house that once held the laughter of children. George and her drew further apart and Gwen found herself falling into the pits of despair. She only had her neighbour Betty to look in on her from time to time, and who they stayed with when their house took a blast in a raid. She wrote to her children regularly and looked forward to their letters or postcards back. Unfortunately, they were separated as there was no room for them to stay in the same place but after a trip to visit them, Gwen ensured that Will was placed in a good home as Ruth had been. But she still missed them constantly and feared they would grow accustomed to the countryside and never want to return to London.

Betty grew concerned for Gwen and her melancholic state and recommended some war work for her friend. But Gwen wanted only her children and her Johnny back. However, after coming across the paper Betty left with her one day advertising various jobs available to women, Gwen almost tossed it into the fire before one job caught her eye. And so Gwen enlists for the construction work on the bridge also.

Joan Abbott is a musical prodigy...although that was never her intention. Her mother had seemingly steered her into taking up the violin and controlled every aspect of her life. And Joan reviled her mother for it. So when she found herself handpicked for an orchestra under the great Sir Ralph Meyers, Joan also finds herself falling under his spell and soon begins an affair with him...mostly to spite her mother, knowing how much she would abhor the whole thing. But as affairs often go, Joan finds herself pregnant and her mother takes control of the situation by feeding her a mixture of orange juice and castor oil so it could then begin its lethal task of ridding Joan of what would inevitably be her shame.

After the laborious experience, Joan take charge of her own life, enlisting for work in the Waterloo Bridge construction and finding a room at Hazel's Hostel, alongside her work colleague Alice. Both women had their own secrets and crosses to bear and would reveal them, it seemed, when the time was right. The hostel in which she now live run by Hazel who lived with her elderly and invalid mother, whom she still called "mummy". She may have been a little eccentric but Hazel was warm and friendly and happy for the company. And despite her mother's pleas, Joan refused to return to the mausoleum that was once her home, finding friendship and acceptance at Hazel's as well as with the women she worked with on Water Bridge.

The three women are vastly different backgrounds and together they form a special bond. Evelyn is teemed up with Gwen, who is mostly silent but an efficient worker, and over time Evelyn manages to crack Gwen's hard exterior she has built up around herself and the two women become good friends.

THE WOMEN OF WATERLOO BRIDGE had the makings of a wonderfully different story during wartime. However, it's the structure of the book that lets this story down. While I can see it's value as we get each women's perspective throughout, the four months which are covered during each of their respective chapters meant that we were actually missing out on the other eight months of each woman's life. So therefore it felt a little convoluted and didn't marry up to the next part of their stories. It also distances the characters from the reader as we feel like we are only catching glimpses of their lives.

But I felt that it could have been far more exciting than it was. So often I reached a point that seemed to cut off mid-story and move onto something else entirely. I found some of the plot confusing as I wondered where something that found its way into the story, thinking "where did that come from?"

But one of my biggest gripes will always be the lengthy chapters. I abhor them. And mostly I cannot see the point of them...particularly as the chapter is then broken down within with "asterixes" to separate parts of the story. However, I did see the relevance of the lengthy chapters here what with each subsequent chapter being each woman's narrative. But I still don't like them.

This really was an original and unique choice for a story set during WW2 - as we often hear about nurses, land girls, WAAFs, Wrens or the ATS. But this one focusing on the women who aided in the construction of a bridge during wartime (and not recognised for it in the end, I might add) promised to be something different. And it was. But again, I felt we were missing out on so much more of each woman's story. I think it would have been far better to enmesh these women together in one story and devote a chapter here and there to their respective backstories so it then all moulded into one big story and, as readers, we'd not be robbed of the story as a whole.

I would have loved to have heard more about Gwen's children and their evacuation, Evelyn's love interest Stan (who seemed to pop out of nowhere and then disappear again so much that it felt like he didn't even feature), Joan's story in general as she seemed to be something of an enigma and even Sylvie's wedding was a rushed affair and before long she was gone. Then Evelyn's possible pursual of an engineering course in Canada...was that a done deal or what happened there? And even Olive, who was a force to be reckoned with on the construction site, just disappeared one day with the vague mention of a bomb. There was a lot of vague innuendo to each woman's story that it was hard to find any satisfying conclusion in the end.

It's very hard to rate THE WOMEN OF WATERLOO BRIDGE because while I did enjoy it in part, I also felt that there was so much missing that was left unsaid that could have been to give the reader a satisfying conclusion. It's a shame because it is such a unique tale to tell.

I would still be interested to see any further historical tales by this author.

I would like to thank #JanCasey, #NetGalley and #AriaFiction for an ARC of #TheWomenOfWaterlooBridge in exchange for an honest review.

I very much enjoyed this book. It has a good story and excellent main characters. I would definately recommend this book.

I didn't live through the war but this has been written exactly as things happened at the time. Reading this makes you feel as though you were there with the girls as they built the bridge and how their lives were entangled within the story. I really enjoyed this and was sorry when it came to the end. These books are the kind that young people today should be reading so that they can understand what our history was like. Very well written and a joy to read. 5 stars given.

Set during WWII, three women discover they have far more to offer the world and the war effort than they imagined.
As they build their friendships and personally grow into their own, these three navigate their own paths to self-realization and personal heartaches.
Honest and enlightening.

*I received this ARC from the publisher and this is my unbiased review

In "The Women of Waterloo Bridge" we meet Evelyn, Gwen, and Joan who are all working in construction on the new Waterloo Bridge in London during WWII. Each woman has a different story, facing joys and struggles.

The structure of this book is unique. It is written in third person, but each chapter is from a different woman's perspective. The book opens in December 1940 and each woman gets a chapter where we are introduced to them and their situation. Each following chapter covers a four month period. For example, April -July 1941 Evelyn; August - November 1941 Gwen; December 1941 - March 1942 Joan (always in the same order). This structure keeps the pace up, but distances us from the characters as there are 8 months of the year that are not covered for each of the characters.

I would have liked to have more of a story about their experiences working on Waterloo Bridge. This was a unique choice for a WWII story - often we hear about The Land Girls or nurses or ambulance drivers. This was the first story I had picked up about women in construction during the war. Unfortunately, this aspect was more of a sideline. The women's personal lives were the focus. But instead of a story, we are given vignettes - slices of life during the war. At times I felt like the author had a checklist of things to be addressed in the story - the evacuation of children - check; the role of women - check; the Blitz - check; Black Market & Rationing - check.

Unfortunately, the structure and focus did not work for me.

An enjoyable book to read. It was about World War two following the lives of three women. It was their task to build Waterloo bridge. We learn about what life was like, evacuation, bombing and how they coped. I did enjoy reading this book and recommend it to be read.

Thoroughly enjoyable book about women and their efforts during World War II. These characters are well explored and each one has their own strengths and frailties. Building the Waterloo Bridge gives them direction in their lives and a chance to contribute during times when many men were called to war.

The United Kingdom, 1940 - 1945, World War Two. Evelyn’s fiancé has just broken off their engagement and rather than being devastated, she feels a certain relief that she doesn’t have to be swept down the path of housewifely drudgery. Gwen is dealing with the grief and other ramifications of her ten-year-old son dying in an air raid at the start of the war, of which her other two children being sent off to a country evacuation pushes her over the brink. Joan has an overbearing mother who has pushed her into a musical career, but a certain indiscretion has left her in a precarious situation which pushes her to make major changes, leaving her ‘perfect’ life behind to find her own way. In their own particular ways, the women all become workers on the construction site of Waterloo Bridge, doing work that would have been thought impossible for women before the war. Relationships develop and the women grow in personal and professional ways. Another personality that deserves mention and who takes up a lot of storytime that isn’t part of the key three is Evelyn’s sister Sylvie, who is important and has a major story arc all of her own, which is an oversight of the editorial team in not marking her as a key character.

This is historical fiction, exploring a part of life that was a major turning point for women’s independence in the undertaking of working jobs that had been deemed men’s work only due to the desperation of needing manual labourer’s in a time of great need. It jumps through time quickly, going from the start of the war until life in the early days after the war, making it difficult to keep track of the political and domestic mores of the time frame. Although there are one major and other and potential romantic storylines, the majority of the novel focuses on the lives of the characters as they grow and develop as individuals.

This novel failed to create an emotional connection between the reader and the characters. In the end, it just didn’t matter what had occurred, how they had changed or what happened to them. They were, in a word, boring. The jumps in time were too fast and too often, and left the reader wondering what had happened in the meantime. It was too short a book for such a large period of time when the periods spoken of were told in excruciating detail and then large swathes of the time were ignored. Not enough information was given about the period that the women were living in to explain the developments which surely would have been pivotal.

There are other books on the period that are much more interesting.

A fantastic debut, an easy read following different women and their family's as war breaks out. I was hooked from the first page and devoured it6in one sitting, I'd be very interested inba follow up.

Set in WWII. Evelyn decides to join in with the war effort after her finance broke off the engagement. She signs up for construction work on Waterloo Bridge.

Gwen is still grieving for her little boy who died in an air raid. Her husband sent the rest of their children to the countryside for safety. She also enlists for construction work.

Joan is a musical prodigy. Her life has always been dictated by her controlling mother. Hen her affair ends in scandal, Joan finally takes control of her own life. She gives up musical career and starts working at Waterloo Bridge.

Three women who come from different backgrounds all meet on the construction sight of Waterloo Bridge. By working together the women form a special bond. Thenoace is steady as we learn about these women working on the construction site. The era and the building of the bridge have been well researched. It also shows the inner strengths these women had. The characters are believable and the plotline is engaging. The ending was a little predictable. A really enjoyable historical fiction novel..

I would like to thank NetGalley, Aria and the author Jan Casey for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love historical fiction and especially the ww2 Era. This book has a lot going for it. It has lost loves, finding new love ,a mother's strength and love. Second chances and finding Hope in a bleak Era. And I like that we follow from different perspectives What I did not like .some parts of the book has in my opinion, too little meat on the bone. It could have touched the heart more. And the ending was a little bit too weak and predictable.
Thank you to netgalley for the e arc in exchange for an honest review

I found this book confusing. Each chapter is about a different person and I found myself only wanting to know what happened to three of them. I struggled to keep going as I really wanted to like it. Sorry, not for me.

What a delightful historical novel this is! Evelyn, Gwen, and Joan each signed up to work construction on the Waterloo Bridge for different reasons. What happens, though, is that they get more than they planned- they find friendship and personal growth. This is a great WWII novel that blends strong female characters with an unusual base- I learned a bit not only about the bridge, but also about construction (and I googled for more info). It's heartwarming, it's emotional (without going sentimental), and it's well written. Casey has a nice storytelling style that pulled me in and kept me reading. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of the genre looking for a lift.

I love historical fiction, especially WWII era novels, and this was no exception. The Women of Waterloo Bridge tells the story of a group of women from all walks of life who come together during the war, and that’s only the beginning. This novel was so entertaining, and I loved getting a different perspective on the wartime effort. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for a review!

A wonderful saga.A group of young women working on the Waterloo bridge.Their friendship family romances I loved this book.#netgalley#avonbooksuk

If you like Family Saga set in the wartime this is definitely for you. Young girls going to work on Waterloo Bridge from different backgrounds. The highs and lows of everyday life. Love Love Love it

Sadly I struggled with the book. Reading it during the covid-19 lockdown period I found it quite depressing. Joan and Gwen both had sad stories. I warmed to Gwen but throughout the book had no interest in the Joan story and found it far-fetched. The title of the book gave the impression of readers learning more about women's war work but it was thin and they could have all worked anywhere together. I found the references to the war seemed to jump in the second half of the book - one day it was D-Day then suddenly the end of the war. Even the pieces about the V1 and V2 rockets didn't seem to explain the severity of them to Londoners life and the fear that residents felt. The end of the book left lots of unanswered questions about each of the characters which is always a disappointing way to end.